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{Khe Hake Cngltsft Classics; 

■ 

" 

SHAKSPERE'S 

A MIDSUMMER- 
NIGHT'S DREAM 



EDITED 

BY 

WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY 



CHICAGO 
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 






Copyright, 1910 
By Scott, Foresman and Company 



CU256115 



PREFACE 

The aim in the volumes of this series is to present 
a satisfactory text of each play, modernized in spell- 
ing and punctuation, with as full an equipment of 
explanation and comment as is necessary for thorough 
intelligibility. The first section of the introduction 
is intended to give the student an idea of the place 
of the play in the history of the English drama in 
general, and of Shakspere's development in particular. 

The text of the present edition has been based on 
the earlier of the two quartos of 1600, with occasional 
readings from later editions. Special pains have been 
taken, since this play is so largely spectacular, to make 
clear which of the stage-directions are taken from 
contemporary editions and which are the conjectures 
of modern editors, the latter being throughout 
enclosed in square brackets. A slight change from 
customary usage in the name of one of the characters 
may be noted. From an examination of the original 
editions it seems clear that Puck is not intended by 
the author to be the proper name of Robin Good- 
fellow, but a descriptive appellation, like Clown or 
Constable, though, as in these instances, it occurs at 
times in stage-directions and speech-tags instead of 
the proper name. "Robin Goodfellow" has accord- 
ingly been uniformly used in the directions, bracketed 



10 PREFACE 

when this involved a departure from the quarto 
reading. 

Some plays, as has been pointed out in previous 
volumes, afford a special opportunity for the discus- 
sion of plot and others of character. The present 
comedy affords the teacher an uncommon opening to 
exhibit Shakspere's power of creating a distinctive 
atmosphere, and the exuberance of his poetic imagi- 
nation. The attention of the student may well be 
drawn to the apparent incongruity of the different 
groups constituting the dramatis persons: the courtly 
dignity of Theseus and his circle, the romantic abandon 
of the lovers, the homeliness of speech and manner of 
Bottom and his mates, the immaterial grace of the 
fairies. Thinking of these groups separately, we 
seem to see the drama moving on a series of distinct 
planes. Yet the action of each is brought into suffi- 
cient relation with all the others ; the incongruity, so 
far as it survives, only increases the delightful humor ; 
and the whole is so skilfully removed from the tests 
of common sense and reason, and clothed in such an 
iridescent veil of poetry, that the play remains a 
unique triumph in its kind. 

For further details on the life and work of Shak- 
spere, the following may be referred to: Dowden's 
Shaksperc Primer, and Shakspere, His Mind and 
Art; Sidney Lee's Life of William Shakespeare 
(revised edition, 1909) ; and Shakspere and His 
Predecessors, by F. S. Boas. For a general account 
of the English drama of the period see A. W. 



PREFACE 11 

Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature 
(revised edition, 1899) and F. E. Schelling's Eliza- 
bethan Drama, both of which are rich in bibliography. 
For questions of language and grammar, see A. 
Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon; J. Bartlett's Con- 
cordance to Shakespeare, and E. A. Abbott's Shakes- 
pearian Grammar. As usual, Dr. H. H. Furness's 
Variorum edition of the present play is a compendium 
of the results of scholarship on the subject. 

I again wish to thank Mr. R. G. Martin for sub- 
stantial assistance. 

W. A. N. 
Harvard University, August, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

Preface 9 

Introduction 

I. Shakspere and the English Drama 15 

II. A Midsummer-Night* s Drtam 32 

Text , 45 

Notes. 133 

Word Index 155 



13 



INTRODUCTION 

I. SHAKSPERE AND THE ENGLISH DRAMA 

The wonderful rapidity of the development of the 
English drama in the last quarter of the sixteenth 
century stands in striking contrast to the slowness of 
its growth before that period. The religious drama, 
out of which the modern dramatic forms were to 
spring, had dragged through centuries with compara- 
tively little change, and was still alive when, in 1576, 
the first theatre was built in London. By 1600 
Shakspere had written more than half his plays and 
stood completely master of the art which he brought 
to a pitch unsurpassed in any age. Much of this 
extraordinary later progress was due to contemporary 
causes; but there entered into it also certain other 
elements which can be understood only in the light 
of the attempts that had been made in the three or 
four preceding centuries. 

In England, as in'Greece, the drama sprang from 

religious ceremonial. The Mass, the centre of the 

public worship of the Roman church, 

The Drama . . . 

before contained dramatic material in the 

Shakspere. gestures of the officiating priests, in 

the narratives contained in the Lessons, and in the 
responsive singing and chanting. Latin, the language 

15 



16 INTRODUCTION 

in which the services were conducted, was unintel- 
ligible to the mass of the people, and as early as the 
fifth century the clergy had begun to use such devices 
as tableaux vivants of scenes like the marriage in 
Cana and the Adoration of the Magi to make com- 
prehensible important events in Bible history. Later, 
the Easter services were illuminated by representa- 
tions of the scene at the sepulchre on the morning of 
the Resurrection, in w T hich a wooden, and afterwards 
a stone, structure was used for the tomb itself, and 
the dialogue was chanted by different speakers repre- 
senting respectively the angel, the disciples, and the 
women. From such beginnings as this there gradu- 
ally evolved the earliest form of the Miracle Play. 

As the presentations became more elaborate, the 
place of performance was moved first to the church- 
yard, then to the fields, and finally to the streets and 
open spaces of the towns. With this change of 
locality went a change in the language and in the 
actors and an extension of the field from which the 
subjects were chosen. Latin gave way to the ver- 
nacular, and the priests to laymen ; and miracle plays 
representing the lives of patron saints were given by 
schools, trade gilds, and other lay institutions. A 
further development appeared when, instead of single 
plays, whole series such as the extant York, Chester, 
and Coventry cycles were given, dealing in chrono- 
logical order with the most important events in Bible 
history from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. 

The stage used for the miracle play as thus devel- 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 17 

oped was a platform mounted on wheels, which was 
moved from space to space through the streets. Each 
trade undertook one or more plays, and, when pos- 
sible, these were allotted with reference to the nature 
of the particular trade. Thus the play representing 
the visit of the Magi bearing gifts to the infant 
Christ was given to the goldsmiths, and the Building 
of the Ark to the carpenters. The costumes were 
conventional and frequently grotesque. Judas always 
wore red hair and a red beard ; Herod appeared as a 
fierce Saracen ; the devil had a terrifying mask and a 
tail ; and divine personages wore gilt hair. 

Meanwhile the attitude of the church towards 
these performances had changed. Priests were for- 
bidden to take part in them, and as early as the four- 
teenth century we find sermons directed against them. 
The secular management had a more important 
result in the introduction of comic elements. Figures 
such as Noah's wife and Herod became frankly 
farcical, and whole episodes drawn from contem- 
porary life and full of local color were invented, in 
which the original aim of edification was displaced 
by an explicit attempt at pure entertainment. Most 
of these features were characteristic of the religious 
drama in general throughout Western Europe. But 
the local and contemporary elements naturally tended 
to become national ; and in England we find in these 
humorous episodes the beginnings of native comedy. 

Long before the miracle plays had reached their 
height, the next stage in the development of the 



18 INTRODUCTION 

drama had begun. Even in very early performances 
there had appeared, among the dramatis persona 
drawn from the Scriptures, personifications of 
abstract qualities such as Righteousness, Peace, 
Mercy, and Truth. In the fifteenth century this 
allegorical tendency, which was prevalent also in the 
non-dramatic literature of the age, resulted in the 
rise of another kind of play, the Morality, in which 
all the characters were personifications, and in which 
the aim, at first the teaching of moral lessons, later 
became frequently satirical. Thus the most powerful 
of all the Moralities, Sir David Lindesay's Satire of 
the Three Estates, is a direct attack upon the corrup- 
tion in the church just before the Reformation. 

The advance implied in the Morality consisted not 
so much in any increase in the vitality of the char- 
acters or in the interest of the plot (in both of which, 
indeed, there was usually a falling off), as in the fact 
that in it the drama had freed itself from the bondage 
of having to choose its subject matter from one set of 
sources — the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the Lives of 
the Saints. This freedom was shared by the Inter- 
lude, a form not always to be distinguished from the 
Morality, but one in which the tendency was to sub- 
stitute for personified abstractions actual social types 
such as the Priest, the Pardoner, or the Palmer. A 
feature of both forms was the Vice, a humorous 
character who appeared under the various disguises of 
Hypocrisy, Fraud, and the like, and whose function 
it was to make fun, chiefly at the expense of the Devil. 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 19 

The Vice is historically important as having be- 
queathed some of his characteristics to the Fool of the 
later drama. 

John Hey wood, the most important writer of Inter- 
ludes, lived well into the reign of Elizabeth, and even 
the miracle play persisted into the reign of her suc- 
cessor in the seventeenth century. But long before it 
finally disappeared it had become a mere medieval 
survival. A new England had meantime come into 
being and new forces were at work, manifesting 
themselves in a dramatic literature infinitely beyond 
anything even suggested by the crude forms which 
have been described. 

The great European intellectual movement known 
as the Renaissance had at last reached England, and 
it brought with it materials for an unparalleled 
advance in all the living forms of literature. Italy 
and the classics., especially, supplied literary models 
and material. Not only were translations from these 
sources abundant, but Italian players visited England, 
and performed before Queen Elizabeth. France and 
Spain, as well as Italy, flooded the literary market 
with collections of tales, from which, both in the 
original languages and in such translations as are 
found in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure (published 
1566-67), the dramatists drew materials for their 
plots. 

These literary conditions, however, did not do 
much beyond offering a means of expression. For a 



20 INTRODUCTION 

movement so magnificent in scale as that which pro- 
duced the Elizabethan Drama, something is needed 
besides models and material. In the present instance 
this something is to be found in the state of exaltation 
which characterized the spirit of the English people 
in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Politically, the 
nation was at last one after the protracted divisions 
of the Reformation, and its pride was stimulated by 
its success in the fight with Spain. Intellectually, it 
was sharing with the rest of Europe the exhilaration 
of the Renaissance. New lines of action in all parts 
of the world, new lines of thought in all departments 
of scholarship and speculation, were opening up; and 
the whole land was throbbing with life. 

In its very beginnings the new movement in Eng- 
land showed signs of that combination of native 
tradition and foreign influence which was to char- 
acterize it throughout. The first regular English 
comedy, Udall's Ralph Roister Doister was an adapta- 
tion of the plot of the Miles Glorias us of Plautus to 
contemporary English life. After a short period of 
experiment by amateurs working chiefly under the 
influence of Seneca, we come on a band of professional 
playwrights who not only prepared the way for 
Shakspere, but in some instances produced works of 
great intrinsic worth. The mythological dramas of 
Lyly with the bright repartee of their prose dialogue 
and the music of their occasional lyrics, the interest- 
ing experiments of Greene and Peele, and the horrors 
of the tragedy of Kyd, are all full of suggestions of 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 21 

what was to come. But by far the greatest of Shaks- 
pere's forerunners was Christopher Marlowe, who 
not only has the credit of fixing blank verse as the 
future poetic medium for English tragedy, but who in 
his plays from Tamb uridine to Edivard II. con- 
tributed to the list of the great permanent master- 
pieces of the English drama. 

It was in the professional society of these men that 

Shakspere found himself when he came to London. 

Born in the provincial town of Strat- 

Shakspere's ford-on-Avon in the heart of England, 

Early Life. 

he was baptized on April 26, 1564 
(May 6th, according to our reckoning). The exact 
day of his birth is unknown. His father was John 
Shakspere, a fairly prosperous tradesman, who may 
be supposed to have followed the custom of his class 
in educating his son. If this were so, William would 
be sent to the Grammar School, already able to read, 
when he was seven, and there he would be set to 
work on Latin Grammar, followed by reading, up to 
the fourth year, in Cato's Maxims, iTsop's Fables, 
and parts of Ovid, Cicero, and the medieval poet 
Mantuanus. If he continued through the fifth and 
sixth years, he would read parts of Vergil, Horace, 
Terence, Plautus, and the Satirists. Greek was not 
usually taught in the Grammar Schools. Whether 
he went through this course or not we have no means 
of knowing, except the evidence afforded by the use 
of the classics in his works, and the famous dictum of 
his friend, Ben Jonson, that he had "small Latin and 



22 INTRODUCTION 

less Greek." What we are sure of is that he was a 
boy of remarkable acuteness of observation, who used 
his chances for picking up facts of all kinds ; for only 
thus could he have accumulated the fund of informa- 
tion which he put to such a variety of uses in his 
writings. 

Throughout the poet's boyhood the fortunes of 
John Shakspere kept improving until he reached the 
position of High Bailiff or Mayor of Stratford. 
When William was about thirteen, however, his 
father began to meet with reverses, and these are 
conjectured to have led to the boy's being taken from 
school early and set to work. What business he was 
taught we do not know, and indeed we have little 
more information about him till the date of his mar- 
riage in November, 1582, to Anne Hathaway, a 
woman from a neighboring village, w T ho was seven 
years his senior. Concerning his occupations in the 
years immediately preceding and succeeding his mar- 
riage several traditions have come down, — of his 
having been apprenticed as a butcher, of his having 
taken part in poaching expeditions, and the like — but 
none of these is based upon sufficient evidence. About 
1585 he left Stratford, and probably by the next year 
he had found his way to London. 

How soon and in what capacity he first became 
attached to the theatres we are again unable to say, 
but by 1592 he had certainly been engaged in 
theatrical affairs long enough to give some occasion 
for the jealous outburst of a rival playwright, Robert 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 23 

Greene, who in a pamphlet posthumously published 
in that year, accused him of plagiarism. Henry 
Chettle, the editor of Greene's pamphlet, shortly 
after apologized for his connection with the charge, 
and bore witness to Shakspere's honorable reputation 
as a man and to his skill both as an actor and a 
dramatist. 

Robert Greene, who thus supplies us with the 
earliest extant indications of his rival's presence in 
London, was in many ways a typical figure among 
the playwrights with whom Shakspere worked during 
this early period. A member of both universities, 
Greene came to the metropolis while yet a }^oung 
man, and there led a life of the most diversified 
literary activity, varied with bouts of the wildest 
debauchery. He was a writer of satirical and contro- 
versial pamphlets, of romantic tales, of elegiac, 
pastoral, and lyric poetry, a translator, a dramatist,— 
in fact, a literary jack-of-all-trades. The society in 
which he lived consisted in part of "University Wits" 
like himself, m part of the low men and women who 
haunted the vile taverns of the slums to prey upon 
such as he. "A world of blackguardism dashed with 
genius," it has been called and the phrase is fit 
enough. Among such surroundings Greene lived, 
and among them he died, bankrupt in body and 
estate, the victim of his own ill-governed passions. 

In conjunction with such men as this Shakspere 
began his life-work. His first dramatic efforts were 
made in revising the plays of his predecessors with a 



24 INTRODUCTION 

view to their revival on the stage; and in Titus 
Andronicus and the first part of Henry VI. we have 
examples of this kind of work. The next step was 
probably the production of plays in collaboration 
with other writers, and to this practice, which he 
almost abandoned in the middle of his career, he 
seems to have returned in his later years in such plays 
as Pericles, Henry VIII., and The Two Noble Kins- 
men. How far Shakspere was of this dissolute set to 
which his fellow-workers belonged it is impossible to 
tell; but we know that by and by, as he gained 
mastery over his art and became more and more 
independent in work and in fortune, he left this 
sordid life behind him, and aimed at the establish- 
ment of a family. In half a dozen years from the 
time of Greene's attack, he had reached the top of 
his profession, was a sharer in the profits of his 
theatre, and had invested his savings in land and 
houses in his native town. The youth who ten 
years before had left Stratford poor and burdened 
with a wife and three children, had now become 
"William Shakspere, Gentleman." 

During these years Shakspere's literary work was 
not confined to the drama, which, indeed, was then 
hardly regarded as a form of literature. In 1593 he 
published Venus and Adonis, and in 1594, Lucrece, 
two poems belonging to a class of highly wrought 
versions of, classical legends which was then fashion- 
able, and of which Marlowe's Hero and Leander is 
the other most famous example. For several years, 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 25 

too, in the last decade of the sixteenth century and 
the first few years of the seventeenth, he was com- 
posing a series of sonnets on love and friendship, in 
this, too, following a literary fashion of the time. 
Yet these give us more in the way of self-revelation 
than anything else he has left. From them we seem 
to be able to catch glimpses of his attitude towards 
his profession, and one of them makes us realize so 
vividly his perception of the tragic risks of his sur- 
roundings that it is set down here : 

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 

Than public means which public manners breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand : 

Pity me then and wish I were renewed ; 
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 

Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection ; 
No bitterness that I will bitter think, 

Nor double penance to correct correction. 
Pity me, then dear friend, and I assure ye 

Even that your pity is enough to cure me. 

It does not seem possible to avoid the inferences 
lying on the surface of this poem ; but whatever con- 
fessions it may imply, it serves, too, to give us the 
assurance that Shakspere did not easily and blindly 
yield to the temptations that surrounded the life of 
the theatre of his time. 



26 INTRODUCTION 

For the theatre of Shakspere's day was no very 

reputable affair. Externally it appears to us now 

a very meagre apparatus — almost 

The 

Elizabethan absurdly so, when we reflect on the 

Theatre. grandeur of the compositions for 

which it gave occasion. A roughly circular wooden 
building, with a roof over the stage and over the 
galleries, but with the pit often open to the wind and 
weather, having very little scenery and practically no 
attempt at the achievement of stage-illusion, such 
was the scene of the production of some of the greatest 
imaginative works the world has seen. Nor was the 
audience very choice. The more respectable citizens 
of Puritan tendencies frowned on the theatre to such 
an extent that it was found advisable to place the 
buildings outside the city limits, and beyond the 
jurisdiction of the city fathers. The pit was thronged 
with a motley crowd of petty tradesfolk and the dregs 
of the town ; the gallants of the time sat on stools on 
the stage, "drinking" tobacco and chaffing the actors, 
their efforts divided between displaying their wit and 
their clothes. The actors were all male, the women's 
parts being taken by boys whose voices were not yet 
broken. The costumes, frequently the cast-off cloth- 
ing of the gallants, were often gorgeous, but seldom 
appropriate. Thus the success of the performance 
had to depend upon the excellence of the piece, the 
merit of the acting, and the readiness of appreciation 
of the audience. 

This last point, however, was more to be relied 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 27 

upon than a modern student might Imagine. Despite 
their dubious respectability, the Elizabethan play- 
goers must have been of wonderfully keen intellectual 
susceptibilities. For clever feats in the manipulation 
of language, for puns, happy alliterations, delicate 
melody such as we find in the lyrics of the times, for 
the thunder of the pentameter as it rolls through the 
tragedies of Marlowe, they had a practiced taste. 
Qualities which we now expect to appeal chiefly to 
the literary student were keenly relished by men who 
could neither read nor write, and who at the same 
time enjoyed jokes w T hich would be too broad, and 
stage massacres which would be too bloody, for a 
modern audience of sensibilities much less acute in 
these other directions. In it all we see how far- 
reaching was the w-onderful vitality of the time. 

This audience Shakspere knew thoroughly, and 
in his writing he showed himself always, with what- 
ever growth in permanent artistic 
Dramatic qualities, the clever man of business 

Development. w f tn h{ s e ye on the market. Thus we 
can trace throughout the course of his production two 
main lines : one indicative of the changes of theatrical 
fashions ; one, more subtle and more liable to mis- 
interpretation, showing the progress of his own 
spiritual growth. 

The chronology of Shakspere's plays will probably 
never be made out with complete assurance, but 
already much has been ascertained ( 1 ) from external 
evidence such as dates of acting or publication, and 



28 



INTRODUCTION 



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SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 29 

allusions in other works, and (2) from internal 
evidence such as references to books or events of 
known date, and considerations of meter and lan- 
guage. The arrangement on page 28 represents what 
is probably an approximately correct view of the 
chronological sequence of his works, though scholars 
are far from being agreed upon many of the details. 

The first of these groups contains three comedies 
of a distinctly experimental character, and a number 
of chronicle-histories, some of which, like the three 
parts of Henry VI., were almost certainly written in 
collaboration with other playwrights. The comedies 
are light, full of ingenious plaj^s on words, and the 
verse is often rhymed. The first of them, at least, 
shows the influence of Lyly. The histories also betray 
a considerable delight in language for its own sake, 
and the Marlowesque blank verse, at its best eloquent 
and highly poetical, not infrequently becomes ranting, 
while the pause at the end of each line tends to 
become monotonous. No copy of Romeo and Juliet 
in its earliest form is known to be in existence, and 
the extent of Shakspere's share in Titus Andronicus 
is still debated. 

The second period contains a group of comedies 
marked by brilliance in the dialogue ; wholesomeness, 
capacity, and high spirits in the main characters, and 
a pervading feeling of good-humor. The histories 
contain a larger comic element than in the first period, 
and are no longer suggestive of Marlowe. Rhymes 
have become less frequent, and the blank verse has 



30 INTRODUCTION 

freed itself from the bondage of the end-stopped line. 

The plays of the third period are tragedies, or 
comedies with a prevailing tragic tone. Shakspere 
here turned his attention to those elements in life 
which produce perplexity and disaster, and in this 
series of masterpieces we have his most magnificent 
achievement. His power of perfect adaptation of 
language to thought and feeling had now reached its 
height, and his verse had become thoroughly flexible 
without having lost strength. 

In the fourth period Shakspere returned to comedy. 
These plays written during his last years in London, 
are again romantic in subject and treatment, and 
technically seem to show the influence of the earlier 
successes of Beaumont and Fletcher. But in place of 
the high spirits which characterized the comedies of 
the earlier periods we have a placid optimism, and a 
recurrence of situations which are more ingenious 
than plausible, and which are marked externally by 
reunions and reconciliations and internally by 
repentance and forgiveness. The verse is singularly 
sweet and highly poetical ; and the departure from 
the end-stopped line has now gone so far that we see 
clearly the beginnings of that tendency which went 
to such an extreme in some of Shakspere's successors 
that it at times became hard to distinguish the metre 
at all. 

In Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII., Shaks- 
pere again worked in partnership, the collaborator 
being, in all probability, John Fletcher. 



SHAKSPERE AND ENGLISH DRAMA 31 

Nothing that we know of Shakspere's life from 
external sources justifies us in saying, as has fre- 
quently been said, that the changes of mood in his 
work from period to period corresponded to changes 
in the man Shakspere. As an artist he certainly 
seems to have viewed life now in this light, now in 
that; but it is worth noting that the period of hij 
gloomiest plays coincides with the period of his great- 
est worldly prosperity. It has already been hinted, 
too, that much of his change of manner and subject 
was dictated by the variations of theatrical fashion 
and the example of successful contemporaries. 

Throughout nearly the whole of these marvelously 
fertile years Shakspere seems to have stayed in Lon- 
don ; but from 1610 to 1612 he was 
Shakspere's making Stratford more and more his 
place of abode, and at the same time 
he was beginning to write less. After 1611 he wrote 
only in collaboration ; and having spent about five 
years in peaceful retirement in the town from which 
he had set out a penniless youth, and to which he 
returned a man of reputation and fortune, he died on 
April 23, 1616. His only son, Hamnet, having died 
in boyhood, of his immediate family there survived 
him his wife and his two daughters, Susanna and 
Judith, both of whom were well married. He lies 
buried in the parish church of Stratford. 



32 INTRODUCTION 



II. A Midsummer-Night's Dream 

It is probable that the comedy of A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream was written about 1594 or 1595, but 
this date is the result of fairly plausible 
conjecture rather than of certain infer- 
ence. We know that it was in existence before 1598, 
for in that year appeared a book called Palfadis 
Tamia, by Francis Meres, containing an explicit 
mention of the play. Meres's book is a kind of critical 
compilation, with a "Comparative Discourse of our 
English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian 
Poets," and the passage in which the name of the 
present play occurs is so important for the chronology 
of Shakspere's works that it is worth while to quote 
it verbatim : 

As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythag- 
oras: so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous 
and honey-tongued Shakespeare. Witness his Venus and 
Adonis; his Lucrece ; his sugared Sonnets, among his private 
friends, etc. 

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy 
and Tragedy among the Latins ; so Shakespeare among the 
English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. 
For Comedy: witness his Gentlemen of Verona; his Errors; 
his Love's Labour's Lost; his Love's Labour's Won 1 ; his 
Midsummer-Night's Dream; and his Merchant of Venice. 

1 This play has not been certainly identified. If it is not lost, it 
may be represented in a revised form by All's Well that Ends Well. 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 33 

For Tragedy: his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., 
King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. 

As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with 
Plautus's tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that 
the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase; 
if they would speak English. 

The supposed allusions in A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream to contemporary publications and events are of 
little assistance in fixing a more definite date than is 
supplied by Meres's reference. Two passages pointed 
out in the notes have been believed by some editors 
to have been suggested by lines in Spenser, but the 
connection is uncertain. The long speech by Titania 
in II. i. 88-114 is more important in this connection. 
It is quite probable that this remarkably detailed 
description of extraordinary weather does refer to the 
wet and stormy summer which brought distress upoj 
English farmers in 1594. It is recorded also that 
the same year, in a spectacle presented before 
Scottish court, a Moor was substituted for a lion to 
prevent a panic in the audience ; and some critics 
have found here a source of Snout's apprehension 
that the ladies may "be afeard of the lion." These 
trifling indications at least harmonize with the 
evidence from the meter and the general impression 
of the degree of maturity implied in the style and 
characterization of the play as a whole ; and there is 
no apparent reason for doubting that it was first per- 
formed about the date of Richard II., and probably 
shortly before the Merchant of Venice. 



pon 

i 



34 INTRODUCTION 

In 1600 two separate editions of A Midsummer- 

Night's Dream were published, and on the earlier of 

these, called from its publisher the 

Source of the ut?- \ r\ » .1 *. • 

Text fisher Quarto, the present text is 

based. The second or " Roberts " 
quarto is a reproduction of the first with a few minor 
changes, and the version in the First Folio Edition, 
in which Shakspere's plays were collected in 1623, 
was taken from the second quarto, with the addition 
of more detailed stage-directions and of the division 
into acts. 

A Midsummer-Night's Dream is one of the two 

or three plays of Shakspere for the main plot of 

which no original has been found. The 

Source of the . 111 re • r tt ■ J 

piot tangled love-anairs or Hermia and 

Helena, Demetrius and Lysander, 
belong to a type of incident occurring with great 
frequency in romantic fiction, and it is reasonable to 
suppose that this series of situations, the least interest- 
ing though structurally the most important in the 
comedy, was contrived by Shakspere himself as a 
framework for the fantasy and humor in which lies 
its chief charm. In the Diana of Montemayor, a 
popular Spanish collection of romantic tales from 
which Shakspere drew part of the plot of The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona, there is found a love-potion 
whose effects remotely resemble those of the juice of 
love-in-idleness. The marriage festivities of Theseus, 
the references to the "rite of May" and the hunting 
scene in IV. i, 107 ff., and the name of Philostrate, 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 35 

are probably taken from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 
and the dramatist may have got further information 
about the Athenian "Duke" from Plutarch's Life of 
Theseus, to which we know he had access in Sir 
Thomas North's translation. 

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe, caricatured by 
the artisans, was accessible in Chaucer's Legend of 
Good Women, in the Elizabethan translation of 
Ovid's Metamorphoses by Golding — used elsewhere 
by Shakspere — and in various contemporary works. 
The mutilated form in which the story is presented 
here males it impossible to fix on any one of these 
as a source, and the dramatist may well have used 
merely what he happened to remember of the tale. 
It is perhaps worth noting that the main theme of 
this story is practically identical with that of Romeo 
and Juliet, which Shakspere had recently treated 
tragically. 

His memory and his imagination are certainly the 
main source of the fairy material of the play. The 
name Titania is used by Ovid for Diana, and Oberon 
was familiar in the romance oiHuon of Bordeaux, in 
The Faerie Queene, and in Robert Greene's James IV. 
The Puck, Robin Goodfellow, had already appeared 
in literature also, but he was a household name in 
England. But these more or less literary elements 
are slight compared with the lore about fairies with 
w T hich Shakspere, like every English boy of his time, 
must have become familiar as a child. Yet it is clear 
that on the popular beliefs about fairyland the drama- 



36 INTRODUCTION 

tist's imagination has performed important changes, 
changes which in turn have affected popular belief, so 
that the fairy-stories which a modern child knows are 
partly due to pure tradition, partly to tradition modi- 
fied by Shakspere. Shakspere had, of course, no theories 
about fairies; it was his imagination not his reason 
that refashioned them. It will help us to keep from 
getting too definite notions about them if we read 
along with the woodland scenes of this play the great 
speech by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, where the 
mysterious people are imagined on a scale that would 
have made stage representation impossible. 

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you 
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes 
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
Cn the fore-finger of an alderman, 
Drawn with a team of little atomies 
Over men's noses as they lie asleep ; 
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs, 
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, 
Her traces of the smallest spider web, 
Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams, 
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, 
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat, 
Not half so big as a round little worm 
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid ; 
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut 
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, 
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. 
And in this state she gallops night by night 
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ; 
On courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; 
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 37 

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, 
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, 
Because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are. 
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, 
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; 
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail 
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, 
Then he dreams of another benefice. 
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, 
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 
Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon 
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, 
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two 
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab 
That plats the manes of horses in the night, 
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes. 

Such fafries, it is clear, could hardly have been 
brought into the personal relations with Bottom 
which are so amusingly depicted in A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream, and they must be regarded as the 
product of the poet's imagination elaborating another 
side of the inconsistent and variable popular tradition. 

A consideration of the most prominent elements in 

A Midsummer-Night' s Dream makes it fairly clear 

that it was not planned in the first 

Occasion of \ r r , ■,. 

the Play. place tor performance on a public 

stage. The comparative weakness of 
interest in the main plot, the opportunities for 
spectacle, and the abundance of song and dance, sug- 
gest rather a court festivity; while the marriage of 



38 INTRODUCTION 

Theseus at the beginning and the wedding-song at 
the close, point to some nobleman's marriage as the 
particular occasion. From the flattery of Queen 
Elizabeth in II. i. 157-164 and the praise of chastity 
in I. i. 74-75, it may be further inferred that the 
Queen herself was present. The marriage of the 
Earl of Derby to Elizabeth Vere at the court at 
Greenwich in 1595, and that of the Earl of Bedford 
to Lucy Harington in 1594, have been suggested as 
offering appropriate opportunities for the display of 
such a pageant as this fairy drama. 

Owing to its lyric quality A Midsummer-Night' s 

Dream contains a very large proportion of rhyme, 

nearly one-third of the play being so 

Meter. . 

written. In most of Shakspere's plays 
the rhymes occur in decasyllabic couplets and occa- 
sional songs; in this there is much greater variety. 
Rhyming couplets are frequently used in descriptive 
passages or love scenes. The ten-syllabled lines are 
sometimes arranged in triplets (II. ii. 110-112; III. 
ii. 159-161), or in quatrains with alternate rhymes 
(III. i. 105-8; III. ii. 122-5, 128-31, 442-5). The 
fairies speak often in a trochaic measure, usually in 
lines of four syllables, and the rhythm thus obtained 
is particularly effective for its suggestion of delicate 
lightness. 

Prose is used by the artisans in ordinary conversa- 
tion always, by the lovers and the group in the court 
of Theseus only in Act V. when they are jesting over 
the interlude, by the fairies never. It is, therefore, 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 39 

employed in this play solely for humorous purposes. To 
heighten the comedy effect, prose and verse are some- 
times used side by side contrastingly, as in the scenes 
between Titania and Bottom (III. i. 127 ff. and 
IV. i. 1-44). 

The blank verse of the play is that which, since 
Marlowe, had been the standard meter of the English 
drama. The normal type of the blank verse has five 
iambic feet, that is, ten syllables with the accent fall- 
ing on the even syllables. From this regular form, 
however, Shakspere deviates with great freedom, the 
commonest variations being the following : 

1. The addition of an eleventh syllable, e. g.: 

There will | I stay | for thee. | My good | Lysan | der, 

I. i. 168. 

Tell you, | I do | not, nor | I can | not love [ you, II. i. 201, 
Things grow | ing are | not ripe | until | their sea | son, 

II. ii. 117. 

Occasionally this extra syllable occurs in the 
middle of the line., at the main pause known as the 
caesura, which is found most frequently, but not 
always, after the third foot, e. g.: 

Not for | thy fair | y King | dom. || Fairies, | away, 11. i. 
144. 

2. Frequently what seems an extra syllable is to be 
slurred in reading; e. g., "spirit" and "whether" in 
the following lines are monosyllables : 

Awake | the pert | and nim | ble spirit | of mirth | , I. i. 13. 
Whether, if | you yield | not to | your fath | er's choice I , 
I. i. 69. 



40 INTRODUCTION 

In 

Either death | or you ] I'll find | imme | diately J , II. ii. 156. 

"either" is a monosyllable and "immediately" has 
four syllables. In some lines it is doubtful whether a 
syllable is to be slurred or sounded as a light extra 
syllable, as e. g., "it" in 

Our sex, | as well | as I, | may chide | you for it, III. ii. 218. 

Conversely, a dissyllable may sometimes be pro- 
nounced as a trisyllable; e. g., 

That is, | hot ice | and won | d(e)rous | strange snow | , 
V. i. 59. 

3. Sometimes an emphatic syllable, or one accom- 
panied by a pause, stands alone as a foot, without an 
unaccented syllable; e. g., 

For part | ing us, | — O, | is all | forgot | , III. ii. 201. 

4. Short lines, lacking one or more feet, occur ; e. g., 

And kill me too, III. ii. 49. 

Takes it in might, not merit, V. i. 92. 

5. Long lines of twelve syllables occur; e. g., 
Uncouple in the western valley, let them go, IV. i. 106. 
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect, V. i. 91. 

6. Frequently, especially in the first foot, a trochee 
is substituted for an iambus, i. e., the accent falls on 
the odd instead of the even syllable ; e . g., 

Turn' 'd her | obedience, which is due to me, I. i. 37. 
Sick'ness | is catching; O, were favour so, I. i. 186. 
A privilege | nev'er ] to see me more, III. ii. 79. 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 41 

It must be remembered, however, that the pronuncia- 
tion of some words has changed since Shakspere's 
time. Thus "business" has three syllables, in 

I must employ you in some bus-i-ness, I. i. 124. 

"Edict" is accented on the last syllable in 

It stands as an edict' in destiny, I. i. 151. 

And "antique" on the first in 

These an'tique fables, nor these fairy toys, V. i. 3. 

Words ending in "-ion" could have a dissyllabic 
termination ; e. g., 

So quick bright things come to confus-i-on, I. i. 149. 

Although differences between the language of 

Shakspere and that of our own day are obvious to 

the most casual reader, there is a risk 

Language. . 

that the student may underestimate 
the extent of these differences, and, assuming that 
similarity of form implies identity of meaning, miss 
the true interpretation. The most important instances 
of change of meaning are explained in the notes ; but 
a clearer view of the nature and extent of the con- 
trast between the language of A Midsummer-Night' s 
Dream and modern English will be gained by a 
classification of the most frequent features of this 
contrast. Some of the Elizabethan usages are merely 
results of the carelessness and freedom which the 
more elastic standards of the Elizabethan time per- 
mitted ; others are forms of expression at that time 
quite accurate, but now become obsolete. 



42 INTRODUCTION 

(1) Nouns, (a) Abstract nouns are often used 
in the plural; e. g., "solemnities," Li. 11 ; "shames," 
III. ii. 385. 

(b) Nouns are sometimes used as adjectives; e. g., 
"the Carthage queen," I. i. 173; or as verbs; e. g., 
"versing love," II. i. 67, 

(2) Pronouns, (a) The possessive "its" did 
not come into common use until after the middle of 
the seventeenth century, and in Shakspere, as in other 
early writers, we have "his"; e. g., "the green corn 
Hath rotted ere his youth," II. i. 95 ; "Dark night, 
that from the eye his function takes," III. ii. 177. 

(b) Confusion between the personal and reflexive 
forms is common ; e. g., "Lysander and myself shall 
meet," Li. 217. 

(c) The ethical dative is commoner in Shakspere 
than in modern speech; e. g., "roar you as gently," 
I. ii. 81 ; "kill me a red-hipp'd humble-bee," IV. 
i. 11. 

(d) The modern distinction among the relative 
pronouns, who, which, that, as, is not observed ; e. g., 
"every man's name, which is thought fit," I. ii. 4. 

(e) The objective case of the personal pronoun is 
sometimes used reflexively where modern English 
requires no object; e. g., "We'll rest us" II. ii. 37; 
"sit thee down," IV. i. 1. 

(3) Adjectives, (a) Double comparatives and 
superlatives occur; e. g., "What worser place," II. i. 
208; "for the more better assurance," III. i. 19. 

(b) Adjectives are sometimes used as nouns; e.g., 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 43 

"Demetrius loves your fair, O happy fair!" I. i. 182; 
"Gentles," V. i. 126. 

(4) Verbs, (a) A singular verb is often found 
with a plural subject; e. g., "Where oxlips and the 
nodding violet groivs," II. i. 250; "virtues . . . doth 
move me," III. i. 139. 

(b) The "n" is frequently dropped from the 
ending of the past participle of strong verbs; e. g., 
"spoke," I. i. 112; "broke," I. i. 175. 

(c) Verbs of motion are at times omitted; e. g., 
"thou shalt not from this grove," II. i. 146; "I'll to 
my queen," III. ii. 375. 

(d) "Be" is sometimes used for "are" in the plural 
of the present indicative; e. g., "Those be rubies," 

II. i. 12; "whereon these sleepers be" IV. i. 85. 

(e) "To" is sometimes used with the infinitive 
where it is omitted now, and conversely; e. g., "How r 
long within this wood intend you^stay?" II. i. 138. 

(/) The infinitive with "to" is occasionally used 
in place of the construction with a participle or a 
gerund ; e . g., "make a heaven of hell, To die upon 
the hand," II. i. 244; "rivals, to mock Helena," 

III. ii. 156. 

(g) A verb now only intransitive may be used 
transitively; e. g., "her mantle she did fall" V. i. 141. 

(5) Adverbs. (a) Double negatives are used 
with a merely intensive force; e.g., "nor never," II. ii. 
126; "nor none," III. ii. 135; "I do not, nor I can- 
not love you," II. i. 201. 

(b) The form of the adjective is often used for 



44 INTRODUCTION 

the adverb; e. g., "that kills himself most gallant for 
love," I. ii. 23; "So quick bright things come to con- 
fusion," I. i. 149. 

(6) Prepositions. (a) These are sometimes 
omitted; e. g., "Steal forth thy father's house," I. i. 
164; "fly my presence," II. ii. 97. 

ib) A preposition is occasionally used where a 
modern verb takes a direct object; e. g., "marry with 
Demetrius," I. i. 40; "admiring of his qualities," 
I. i. 231 ; "warbling of one song," III. ii. 206. 

(c) The usa^e of prepositions is often different 
from that of today; e. g., "Against our nuptial, and 
confer with you Of something," I. i. 125 ; "Or in the 
beached margent of the sea," II. i. 85; "More fond 
on her than she upon her love," II. i. 266. 

(7) Conjunctions. These are often omitted; 
e. g., "look^you arm yourself," I. i. 117; "As v it 
should pierce," II. i. 160. 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAxM 



[DRAMATIS PERSONS 



Theseus, duke of Athens. 
Egeus, father to Hermia. 
Lysander, betrothed to Hermia. 
Demetrius, in love with Hermia. 
Philostrate, master of the revels to Theseus. 



Quince, a carpenter, 
Bottom, a weaver, 
Flute, a bellows-mender, 
Snout, a tinker, 
Snug, a joiner, 
Starveling, a tailor, 



presenting 



Prologue. 

Pyramus. 

Thisbe. 

Wall. 

Lion. 

Moonshine. 



Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus. 

Hermia, daughter to Egeus, betrothed to Lysander. 

Helena, in love with Demetrius. 

Oberon, king of the fairies. 

Titania, queen of the fairies. 

Robin Goodfellow, a Puck. 

Peaseblossom, 



Cobweb, 

Moth, 

mustardseed, 



fairies. 



Other fairies attending their King and Queen. 
Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta. 



Scene: Athens, and a wood near 



it.] 



46 



A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 
ACT I. 

[Scene I. Athens. The palace of Theseus.] 

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, [Philostrate,] with 
others. 

The. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour 
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in 
Another moon ; but, O, methinks how slow 
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, 
5 Like to a step-dame or a dowager 
Long withering out a young man's revenue. 

Hip. Four days will quickly steep themselves in 
night; 
Four nights will quickly dream away the time ; 
And then the moon, like to a silver bow 
10 New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night 
Of our solemnities. 

The. Go, Philostrate, 

Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments ; 
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth ; 
Turn melancholy forth to funerals ; 
15 The pale companion is not for our pomp. 

[Exit Philostrate.] 
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword, 
And w T on thy love, doing thee injuries; 



48 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i.i. 

But I will wed thee in another key, 

With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. 

Enter Egeus, Hermia, Lysander, <W Demetrius. 

Ege. Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke! 

The. Thanks, good Egeus; what's the news with 
thee ? 

Ege. Full of, vexation come I, with complaint 
Against my child, my daughter Hermia. 
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord, 
This man hath my consent to marry her. 2 s 

Stand forth, Lysander: and, my gracious Duke, 
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child. 
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, 
And interchang'd love-tokens with my child. 
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung 30 

With faining voice verses of faining love, 
And stolen the impression of her fantasy 
W'ith bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, 
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, — messengers 
Of strong prevailment in unhard'ned youth. 35 

With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart, 
Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me, 
To stubborn harshness ; and, my gracious Duke, 
Be it so she will not here before your Grace 
Consent to marry with Demetrius, 40 

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens, 
As she is mine, I may dispose of her; 
Which shall be either to this gentleman 
Or to her death, according to our law 



i. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 49 

Immediately provided in that case. 

The. What say you, Hermia? Be advis'd, fair 
maid. 
To you your father should be as a god, 
One that compos'd your beauties, yea, and one 
To whom you are but as a form in wax 
By him imprinted, and within his power 
To leave the figure or disfigure it. 
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman. 

Her. So is Lysander. 

The . In himself he is ; 

But in this kind, wanting your father's voice, 
The other must be held the worthier. 

Her. I would my father look'd but with my eyes. 

The. Rather your eyes must with his judgment 
look. 

Her. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me. 
I know not by what power I am made bold, 
Nor how it may concern my modesty, 
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts ; 
But I beseech your Grace that I may know 
The worst that may befall me in this case, 
If I refuse to wed Demetrius. 

The. Either to die the death or to abjure 
For ever the society of men. 
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires, 
Know of your youth, examine well your blood, 
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, 
You can endure the livery of a nun, 
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, 



50 A MIDSUMMER-XIGHT'S DREAM i. i. 

To live a barren sister all your life, 

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. 

Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood 

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage ; ?5 

But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, 

Than that which withering on the virgin thorn 

Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness. 

Her. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, 
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up so 

Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke 
My soul consents not to give sovereignty. 

The. Take time to pause; and, by the next new 
moon — 
The sealing-day betwixt my love and me, 
For everlasting bond of fellowship — 85 

Upon that day either prepare to die 
For disobedience to your father's will, 
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would, 
Or on Diana's altar to protest 
For aye austerity and single life. 90 

Dem. Relent, sweet Hermia; and, Lysander, yield 
Thy crazed title to my certain right. 

Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius, 
Let me have Hermia's ; do you marry him. 

Ege. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love, 95 
And what is mine my love shall render him. 
And she is mine, and all my right of her 
I do estate unto Demetrius. 

Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he, 
As well possess'd ; my love is more than his ; 10c 



i. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 51 

My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd, 

If not with vantage, as Demetrius' ; 

And which is more than all these boasts can be, 

I am belov'd of beauteous Hermia. 

Why should not I then prosecute my right? 

Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head, 

Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena, 

And won her soul ; and she, sweet lady, dotes, 

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, 

Upon this spotted and inconstant man. 

The. I must confess that I have heard so much, 
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; 
But, being over-full of self-affairs, 
My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come ; 
And come, Egeus ; you shall go with me, 
I have some private schooling for you both. 
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself 
To fit your fancies to your father's will ; 
Or else the law of Athens yields you up — 
Which by no means we may extenuate — 
To death, or to a vow of single life. 
Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love? 
Demetrius and Egeus, go along. 
I must employ you in some business 
Against our nuptial, and confer with you 
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves. 

Ege. With duty and desire we follow you. 

[Exeunt all but Lysander and Hermia. 

Lys. How now, my love! why is your cheek so 
pale? 



52 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i. i. 

How chance the roses there do fade so fast ? 

Her. Belike for want of rain, which I could well 130 
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes. 

Lys. Ay me ! for aught that I could ever read 
Could ever hear by tale or history, 
The course of true love never did run smooth ; 
But, either it was different in blood, — 135 

He r. O cross ! too high to be enthrall'd to low. 

Lys. Or else misgraffed in respect of years, — 

Her. O spite ! too old to be engag'd to young. 

Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, — 

Her. O hell ! to choose love by another's eyes. 140 

Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, 
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, 
Making it momentany as a sound, 
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, 
Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 145 

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
And ere a man hath power to say "Behold !" 
The jaws of darkness do devour it up; 
So quick bright things come to confusion. 

Her. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, 150 
1: ;tands as an edict in destiny. 
Then let us teach our trial patience,, 
Because it is a customary cross, 
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, 
Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers. 155 

Lys. A good persuasion ; therefore, hear me, 
Hermia. 
I have a widow aunt, a dowager 



i. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 53 

Of great revenue, and she hath no child. 

From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; 

loo And she respects me as her only son. 

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee; , 
And to that place the sharp Athenian law 
Cannot pursue us. If thou lov'st me then, 
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night; 

165 And in the wood, a league without the town, 
Where I did meet thee once with Helena 
To do observance to a morn of May, 
There will I stay for thee. 

Her. My good Lysander ! 

I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow, 

170 By his best arrow with the golden head. 
By the simplicity of Venus' doves, 
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, 
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, 
When the false Troyan under sail w T as seen, 

175 By all the vows that ever men have broke, 
In number more than ever women spoke. 
In that same place thou hast appointed me 
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. 

Lys. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes 
Helena. 

Enter Helena. 

iso Her. God speed fair Helena! Whither away? 
Hel. Call you me fair ? That fair again unsay. 
Demetrius loves your fair, O happy fair! 
Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue's sweet air 



54 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i. i. 

More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear 

When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. 1&5 

Sickness is catching; O, were favour so, 

Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; 

My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, 

My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. 

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, 190 

The rest I'll give to be to you translated. 

O, teach me how you look, and with what art 

You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart. 

Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. 

Hel. O that your frowns would teach my smiles 195 
such skill ! 

Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. 

Hel. O that my prayers could such affection move ! 

Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me. 

Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me. 

Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. 200 

Hel. None, but your beauty. Would that fault 
were mine! 

Her. Take comfort ; he no more shall see my face ; 
Lysander and myself will fly this place. 
Before the time I did Ljsander see, 

Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me ; 205 

O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, 
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell ! 

Lys. Helen, to you our minds we w T ill unfold. 
To-morrow night, when Phcebe doth behold 
Her silver visage in the watery glass, 210 

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, 



i. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 55 

A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal, 
Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to steal. 
Her. And in the wood,, where often you and I 

215 Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, 
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, 
There my Lysander and myself shall meet ; 
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes, 
To seek new friends and stranger companies. 

220 Farewell, sweet playfellow ! Pray thou for us ; 

And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius ! 

Keep w T ord, Lysander; we must starve our sight 

From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight. 

Lys. I w T ill, my Hermia. 

[Exit Herm. 

Helena, adieu : 
225 As you on him, Demetrius dote on you ! 

[Exit. 
Hel. How happy some o'er other some can be ! 

Through Athens I am thought as fair as sjie. 

But what of that ? Demetrius thinks not so ; 

He will not know what all but he do know; 
230 And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, 

So I, admiring of his qualities. 

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, 

Love can transpose to form and dignity. 

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, 
235 And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. 

Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; 

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste ; 

And therefore is Love said to be a child, 



56 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i. ii. 

Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd. 

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, 240 

So the boy Love is perjur'd every where: 

For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne, 

He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine; 

And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, 

So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt. 245 

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight ; 

Then to the wood will he to-morrow night 

Pursue her ; and for this intelligence 

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense. 

But herein mean I to enrich my pain, 250 

To have his sight thither and back again. 

[Exit. 

[Scexe II. Athens. Quince's house.] 

Enter Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and 
Starveling. 

Quin. Is all our company here? 

Bot. You were best to call them generally, man 
by man, according to the scrip. 

Quin. Here is the scroll of every man's name, 
which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in 5 
our interlude before the Duke and the Duchess, on 
his wedding-day at night. 

Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play 
treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so 
grow to a point. 10 

Quin. Marry, our play is. The most lamentable 



i. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 57 

comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby. 
Bot. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and 
a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your 
15 actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves. 

Quin. Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the 
weaver. 

Bot. Ready. Name what part I am for, and 
proceed. 
20 Quin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for 
Pyramus. 

Bot. What is Pyramus ? A lover, or a tyrant ? 
Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallant for 
love. 
25 Bot. That will ask some tears in the true per- 
forming of it. If I do it, let the audience look to 
their eyes. I will move storms, I w T ill condole in 
some measure. To the rest. Yet my chief humour 
is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part 
30 to tear a cat in, to make all split. 
" The raging rocks 
And shivering shocks 
Shall break the locks 
Of prison gates; 
35 And Phibbus' car 

Shall shine from far 
And make and mar 
The foolish Fates." 
This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players. 
40 This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more 
condoling. 



58 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i. ii. 

Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. 

Flu. Here, Peter Quince. 

Quin. Flute, you must take Thisby on you. 

Flu. What is Thisby? A wandering knight? 45 

Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love. 

Flu. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I 
have a beard coming. 

Quin. That's all one; you shall play it in a mask, 
and you may speak as small as you will. 50 

Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby 
too. I'll speak in a monstrous little voice. "Thisne! 
Thisne! Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisby 
dear, and lady dear!" 

Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus ; and, 55 
Flute, you Thisby. 

Bot. Well, proceed. 

Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor. 

Star. Here, Peter Quince. 

Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby 's 60 
mother. Tom Snout, the tinker. 

Snout. Here, Peter Quince. 

Quin. You, Pyramus' father; myself, Thisby's 
father. Snug, the joiner, you, the lion's part; and, I 
hope, here is a play fitted. 65 

Snug. Have you the lion's part written? Pray 
you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. 

Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing 
but roaring. 

Bot. Let me play the Ijon too. I will roar, that I 70 
will do anv man's heart good to hear me. I will 



i. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 59 

roar, that I will make the Duke say, "Let him roar 
again, let him roar again." 

Quin. An you should do it too terribly, you would 
75 fright the Duchess and the ladies, that they would 
shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. 

All. That would hang us, every mother's son. 

Bot. I grant you, friends, if you should fright the 

ladies out of their wits, they would have no more 

80 discretion but to hang us; but I will aggravate my 

voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking 

dove ; I will roar you an 't were any nightingale. 

Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus ; for 
Pyramus is a sweet-fac'd man; a proper man, as one 
85 shall see in a summer's day ; a most lovely gentleman- 
like man : therefore you must needs play Pyramus. 

Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were 
I best to play it in? 

Quin. Why, what you will. 
90 Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw- 
colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple- 
in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, 
your perfect yellow. 

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair 
95 at all, and then you will play barefac'd. But, masters, 
here are your parts ; and I am to entreat you, request 
you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night ; 
and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the 
town, by moonlight. There will we rehearse, for if 
ioo we meet in the city, we shall be dogg'd with com- 
pany, and our devices known. In the meantime I 



60 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM i. ii. 

will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. 
I pray you, fail me not. 

Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse 
most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be 
perfect ; adieu. 

Qu'in. At the Duke's oak w T e meet. 

Bot. Enough ; hold or cut bow-strings. 

[Exeunt. 



ACT II. 

[Scene I. A wood near Athens.'] 

Enter a Fairy at one door and Robin GooDFELLOW 
at another. 

Robin. How now, spirit! whither wander you? 
Fai. Over hill, over dale, 

Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
Over park, over pale, 
5 Thorough flood, thorough fire, 

I do wander every where, 
Swifter than the moon's sphere; 
And I serve the fairy Queen, 
To dew her orbs upon the green. 
10 The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 

In their gold coats spots you see ; 
Those be rubies, fairy favours, 
In those freckles live their savours. 
I must go seek some dewdrops here 
15 And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone. 
Our Queen and all her elves come here anon. 

Robin. The King doth keep his revels here 
to-night ; 
Take heed the Queen come not within his sight. 
20 For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, 

61 



62 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. i. 

Because that she as her attendant hath 

A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king. 

She never had so sweet a changeling; 

And jealous Oberon would have the child 

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; 25 

But she perforce withholds the loved boy, 

Crowns him with -flowers, and makes him all her joy; 

And now they never meet in grove or green, 

By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, 

But they do square, that all their elves for fear 30 

Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there. 

Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite. 
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite 
Call'd Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he 
That frights the maidens of the villagery, 35 

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, 
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn, 
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm, 
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? 
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, 40 

You do their work, and they shall have good luck. 
Are not you he? 

Robin. Thou speakest aright ; 

I am that merry wanderer of the night. 
I jest to Oberon and make him smile 
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, 45 

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal ; 
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
In very likeness of a roasted crab, 
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob 



ii. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 63 

50 And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. 
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, 
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me. 
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, 
And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough ; 

55 And then the whole quire hold their hips 'and laugh, 
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear 
A merrier hour was never wasted there. 
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon. 

Fai. And here my mistress. Would that he were 
gone! 

Enter the King of Fairies [Oberon] at one door 
with his train; and the Queen [Titania] at 
another with hers. 

60 Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. 

Tita. What, jealous Oberon ! Fairies, skip hence : 
I have forsworn his bed and company. 

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton! Am not I thy lord? 
Tita. Then I must be thy lady ; but I know 
65 When thou hast stolen away from fairy land, 
And in the shape of Corin sat all day, 
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love 
To amorous Phillida. W"hy art thou here, 
Come from the farthest steep of India? 
70 But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, 
Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love, 
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come 
To give their bed joy and prosperity. 

Obe. How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, 



64 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. i. 

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, 75 

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus ? 

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering 

night 
From Perigenia, whom he ravished? 
And make him with fair ^gle break his faith, 
With Ariadne, and Antiopa? so 

Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy; 
And never, since the middle summer's spring, 
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
Or in the beached margent of the sea, 85 

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. 
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, 
As in revenge, hath suck'd up from the sea 
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land, 90 

Have every petty river made so proud 
That they have overborne their continents. 
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard. 95 

The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock, 
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud, 
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green 
For lack of tread are undistinguishable. 10c 

The human mortals want their winter cheer; 
No night is now with hymn or carol blest ; 
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 



ii. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 65 

Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 

105 That rheumatic diseases do abound. 

And thorough this distemperature we see 
The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts 
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, 
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown 

no An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer. 
The childing autumn, angry winter, change 
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, 
By their increase, now knows not which is which. 

.is And this same progeny of evils comes 
From our debate, from our dissension ; 
We are their parents and original. 

Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you. 
Why should Titania cross her Oberon? 

120 I do but beg a little changeling boy 
To be my henchman. 

Tita. Set your heart at rest ; 

The fairy land buys not the child of me. 
His mother was a votaress of my order, 
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, 

125 Full often hath she gossip'd by my side, 

And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, 
Marking the embarked traders on the flood, 
When we have laugh 'd to see the sails conceive 
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind ; 

130 Which she with pretty and with swimming gait 
Following, her womb then rich with my young squire, 
Would imitate, and sail upon the land 



66 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. i. 

To fetch me trifles, and return again, 

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise. 

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; 135 

And for her sake do I rear up her boy, 

And for her sake I will not part with him. 

Obe . How long within this wood intend you stay ? 

Tita. Perchance till after Theseus' wedding-day. 
If you will patiently dance in our round ho 

And see our moonlight revels, go with us ; 
If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts. 

Obe. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee. 

Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away ! 
We shall chide downright, if I longer stay. 145 

[Exit [Titania with he?- train]. 

Obe. Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this 
grove 
Till I torment thee for this injury. 
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest 
Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 150 

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
To hear the sea-maid's music? 

Robin. I remember. 

Obe. That very time I saw, but thou couldst net, 155 
Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
Cupid all arm'd. A certain aim he took 
At a fair vestal throned by the west, 
And loos'd his love-shaft smartlv from his bow, 



ii. i. A MIDSUMMER- NIGHT'S DREAM 67 

160 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; 

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 

Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, 

And the imperial votaress passed on. 

In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 
165 Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell. 

It fell upon a little western flower, 

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound. 

And maidens call it love-in-idleness. 

Fetch me that flower, the herb I shew'd thee once. 
no The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid 

Will make or man or woman madly dote 

Upon the next live creature that it sees. 

Fetch me this herb ; and be thou here again 

Ere the leviathan can swim a league. 

175 Robin. I'll put a girdle round about the earth 

In forty minutes. r „ . -. 

[Exit.] 

Obe. Having once this juice. 

I'll watch Titania when she is asleep, 

And drop the liquor of it in her eyes. 

The next thing then she waking looks upon, 
i8o Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, 

On meddling monkey, or on busy ape, 

She shall pursue it with the soul of love; 

And ere I take this charm from off her sight, 

As I can take it with another herb, 
155 I'll make her render up her page to me. 

But who comes here ? I am invisible ; 

And I will overhear their conference. 



68 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. i. 

Enter Demetrius, Helena following him. 

Dem. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. 
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia? 
The one I'll stay, the other stayeth me. 190 

Thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood ; 
And here am I, and wood within this wood, 
Because I cannot meet my Hermia. 
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. 

He I. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant ; 195 
But jet you draw not iron, for my heart 
Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw, 
And I shall have no power to follow you. 

Dem. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? 
Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth 200 

Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you ? 

Hel. And even for that do I love you the more. 
I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius, 
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you. 
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, 205 

Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, 
Unworthy as I am to follow you. 
What worser place can I beg in your love, — 
And jet a place of high respect with me, — 
Than to be used as you use your dog? 210 

Dem. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, 
For I am sick when I do look on thee. 

Hel. And I am sick when I look not on you. 

Dem. You do impeach your modesty too much, 
To leave the city and commit yourself 215 



ii. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 69 

Into the hands of one that loves you not; 
To trust the opportunity of night 
And the ill counsel of a desert place 
With the rich worth of your virginity. 

220 Hel. Your virtue is my privilege. For that 
It is not night when I do see your face, 
Therefore I think I am not in the night; 
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, 
For you in my respect are all the world. 

225 Then how can it be said I am alone, 

When all the world is here to look on me ? 

Dem. I'll run from thee and hide me in the brakes, 
And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. 

Hel. The wildest hath not such a heart as you. 

230 Run when you will, the story shall be chang'd : 
Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase ; 
The dove pursues the griffin ; the mild hind 
Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed, 
When cowardice pursues and valour flies. 

235 Dem. I will not stay thy questions ; let me go ; 
Or, if thou follow me, do not believe 
But I shall do thee mischief in the wood. 

Hel. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, 
You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius ! 

240 Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. 
We cannot fight for love, as men may do. 
We should be woo'd and were not made to woo. 

[Exit Dem.] 
I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, 
To die upon the hand I love so well. [Exit. 



70 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. i. 

Obe. Fare thee well, nymph. Ere he do leave 245 
this grove, 
Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love. 

Re-enter [Robin Goodfellow]. 

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer. 

Robin. Ay, there it is. 

Obe. I pray thee, give it me. 

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 250 

Quite over-canopi'd with luscious woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine. 
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, 
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight ; 
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, 255 

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in ; 
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes, 
And make her full of hateful fantasies. 
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove. 
A sw^eet Athenian lady is in love 260 

With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes, 
But do it when the next thing he espies 
May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man 
By the Athenian garments he hath on. 
Effect it with some care, that he may prove 265 

More fond on her than she upon her love; 
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow. 

Robin. Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so. 

[Exeunt. 



ii. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 71 

[Scene II. Another part of the wood.] 

Enter Titania, with her train. 

Tita. Come, now a roundel and a fairy song; 
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence; 
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, 
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings 
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back 
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders 
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep ; 
Then to your offices and let me rest. 

The Fairies sing. 

[1. Fairy.] "You spotted snakes with double 
tongue, 
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen ; 
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, 
Come not near our fairy queen." 

[Cho.] "Philomel, with melody 
Sing in our sweet lullaby; 
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby. 
Never harm, 
Nor spell nor charm, 
Come our lovely lady nigh. 
So, good night, with lullaby." 



72 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. ii. 

1. Fairy. "Weaving spiders, come not here ; 20 

Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence ! 
Beetles black, approach not near ; 
Worm nor snail, do no offence." 

[Cho.] "Philomel, with melody," etc. 

2. Fairy. Hence, away! now all is well. 25 

One aloof stand sentinel. 

[Exeunt Fairies.] Titania sleeps. 

Enter Oberon [and squeezes the flower on Titania 's 
eyelids]. 

Obe. What thou seest when thou dost wake, 
Do it for thy true-love take, 
Love and languish for his sake. 
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 30 

Pard, or boar with bristled hair, 
In thy eye that shall appear 
When thou wak'st, it is thy dear. 
Wake when some vile thing is near. 

[Exit.] 

Enter Lysaxder and Hermia. 

Lys. Fair love, you faint with wandering in the 

wood ; 35 

And to speak troth, I have forgot our way. 
We'll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good, 

And tarry for the comfort of the day. 

Her. Be it so, Lysander. Find you out a bed ; 
For I upon this bank will rest my head. 40 



ii. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 73 

Lys. One turf shall serve as pillow for us both ; 

One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth. 
Her. Nay, good Lysander ; for my sake, my dear, 

Lie further off yet ; do not lie so near. 
45 Lys. O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence ! 

Love takes the meaning in love's conference, 

I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit 

So that but one heart we can make of it ; 

Two bosoms interchained with an oath ; 
50 So then two bosoms and a single troth. 

Then by your side no bed-room me deny ; 

For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie. 
Her. Lysander riddles very prettily. 

Now much beshrew my manners and my pride, 
55 If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied. 

But, gentle friend, for love arid courtesy 

Lie further off ; in human modesty, 

Such separation as may well be said 

Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid, 
60 So far be distant ; and, good night, sweet friend. 

Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end ! 
Lys. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer, say I ; 

And then end life when I end loyalty! 

Here is my bed ; sleep give thee all his rest ! 
65 Her. With half that wish the wisher's eves be 
press'd ! [They sleep. 

Enter [ROBIN GOODFELLOW]. 

Robin. Through the forest have I gone, 
But Athenian found I none, 



74 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. ii. 

On whose eyes I might approve 

This flower's force in stirring love. 

Night and silence — Who is here? 70 

Weeds of Athens he doth wear ! 

This is he, my master said, 

Despised the Athenian maid ; 

And here the maiden, sleeping sound, 

On the dank and dirty ground. 75 

Pretty soul! she durst not lie 

Near this lack-love kill-courtesy. 

Churl, upon thy eyes I throw 

All the power this charm doth owe. 

When thou wak'st, let love forbid so 

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid ; 

So awake when I am gone, 

For I must now to Oberon. 

[Exit. 

Enter Demetrius and Helena, running. 

Hel. Stay though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius. 

Dem. I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me 85 
thus. 

Hel. O, wilt thou darkling leave me ? Do not so. 

Dem. Stay, on thy peril ; I alone will go. 

[Exit. 

Hel. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase ! 
The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace. 
Happy is Hermia, wheresoe'er she lies, 90 

For she hath blessed and attractive eyes. 
How came her eves so bright? Not with salt tears ; 



ii. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 75 

If so, my eyes are oftener wash'd than hers. 

No, no, I am as ugly as a bear, 
95 For beasts that meet me run away for fear ; 

Therefore no marvel though Demetrius 

Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus. 

What wicked and dissembling glass of mine 

Made me compare with Hermia's sphery eyne? 
100 But who is here? Lysander! on the ground! 

Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound. 

lysander, if you live, good sir, awake. 

Lys. [Awaking.] And run through fire I will for 
thy sweet sake. 

Transparent Helena ! Nature shows art, 
105 That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart. 

Where is Demetrius ? O, how fit a word 

Is that vile name to perish on my sword ! 
Hel. Do not say so, Lysander ; say not so. 

What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what 
though ? 
no Yet Hermia still loves you; then be content. 

Lys. Content with Hermia! No; I do repent 

The tedious minutes I with her have spent. 

Not Hermia but Helena I love. 

Who will not change a raven for a dove? 
115 The will of man is by his reason sway'd ; 

And reason says you are the worthier maid. 

Things growing are not ripe until their season, 

So I, being.young, till now ripe not to reason ; 

And touching now the point of human skill, 
120 Reason becomes the marshal to my will 



76 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM n. ii. 

And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook 

Love's stories written in love's richest book. 

Hel. Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born ? 

When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? 

Is 't not enough, is 't not enough, young man, 125 

That I did never, no, nor never can, 

Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye, 

But you must flout my insufficiency ? 

Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth you do. 

In such disdainful manner me to woo. 130 

But fare you well ; perforce I must confess 

I thought you lord of more true gentleness. 

O, that a lady, of one man refus'd, 

Should of another therefore be abus'd ! r „ . 

[Exit. 

Lys. She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou 

there ; 135 

And never mayst thou come Lysander near ! 

For as a surfeit of the sweetest things 

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings, 

Or as the heresies that men do leave 

Are hated most of those they did deceive, 140 

So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, 

Of all be hated, but the most of me! 

And, all my powers, address your love and might 

To honour Helen and to be her knight. r „ . 

[Exit. 

Her. [Aivaking.] Help me, Lysander, help me! 

do thy best 145 

To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast ! 



ii. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 77 

Ay me, for pity ! what a dream was here ! 

Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. 

Methought a serpent eat my heart away, 
150 And you sat smiling at his cruel prey. 

Lysander ! what, remov'd ? Lysander ! lord ! 

What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word? 

Alack, where are you ? Speak, an if you hear ; 

Speak, of all loves ! I swoon almost with fear. 
155 No? then I well perceive you are not nigh. 

Either death or you I'll find immediately. 

[Exit. 



ACT III. 

[Scene I. The wood. Titania lying asleep.] 

Enter the clowns [Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, 
Snout and Starveling]. 

Bot. Are we all met ? 

Quin. Pat, pat; and here's a marvellous con- 
venient place for our rehearsal. This green plot 
shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring- 
house ; and we will do it in action as we will do it 
before the Duke. 

Bot. Peter Quince! 

Quin. What say'st thou, bully Bottom? 

Bot. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus 
and Thisby that will never please. First Pyramus 
must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies 
cannot abide. How answer you that ? 

Snout. By 'r lakin, a parlous fear. 

Star. I believe we must leave the killing out, 
when all is done. 

Bot. Not a whit ! I have a device to make all 
well. Write me a prologue ; and let the prologue 
seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords and 
that Pvramus is not kill'd indeed; and, for the more 



in. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 79 

20 better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not 
Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put 
them out of fear. 

Qui?i. Well, we will have such a prologue; and 
it shall be written in eight and six. 
25 Bot. No, make it two more; let it be written in 
eight and eight. 

Snout. Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion? 

Star. I fear it, I promise you. 

Bot. Masters, you ought to consider with your- 

30 selves. To bring in — God shield us ! — a lion among 

ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a 

more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living ; and we 

ought to look to 't. 

Snout. Therefore another prologue must tell he 
35 is not a lion. 

Bot. Nay, you must name his name, and half his 
face must be seen through the lion's neck; and he 
himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the 
same defect, "Ladies," or "Fair ladies, I would wish 
40 you," or "I would request you," or "I would entreat 
you, not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. 
If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of 
my life. No, I am no such thing; I am a man as 
other men are;" and there indeed let him name his 
45 name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner. 

Quin. Well, it shal] be so. But there is two hard 
things; that- is, to bring the moonlight into a cham- 
ber ; for, you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by 
moonlight. 



80 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM in. i. 

Snout. Doth the moon shine that night we play 
our play? 

Bot. A calendar, a calendar ! Look in the almanac ! 
Find out moonshine, find out moonshine. 

Quin. Yes, it doth shine that night. 

Bot. Why, then may you leave a casement of the 
great chamber window, w T here we play, open, and the 
moon may shine in at the casement. 

Quin. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush 
of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure, 
or to present, the person of Moonshine. Then, there 
is another thing: we must have a wall in the great 
chamber ; for Pyramus and Thisby, says the story, 
did talk through the chink of a wall. 

Snout. You can never bring in a wall. What say 
you, Bottom? 

Bot. Some man or other must present Wall ; and 
let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some 
rough-cast about him, to signify wall; or let him 
hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall 
Pyramus and Thisby whisper. 

Quin. If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit 
down, every mother's son, and rehearse your parts. 
Pyramus, you begin. When you have spoken your 
speech, enter into that brake. And so every one 
according to his cue. 

Enter Robin Goodfellow [behind]. 

Robin. What hempen home-spuns have we swag- 
gering here, 



50 



in. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 81 

So near the cradle of the fairy queen ? 
What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor; 
An actor too perhaps, if I see cause. 
so Quin. Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth. 

Bot. "Thisby, the flowers of odious savours 

sweet," — 
Quin. Odorous, odorous. 

Bot. "odours savours sweet ; 

So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear. 
85 But hark, a voice! Stay thou but here awhile, 
And by and by I will to thee appear." 

[Exit. 
Robin. A stranger Pyramus than e'er play'd here. 

[Exit]. 
Flu. Must I speak now? 

Quin. Ay, marry, must you ; for you must under- 
90 stand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is 
to come again. 

Flu. "Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of 
hue, 
Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, 
Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew, 
95 As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, 

I'll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny's tomb." 
Quin. "Ninus' tomb," man. Why, you must not 
speak that yet; that you answer to Pyramus. You 
speak all your part at once, cues and all. Pyramus 
ioo enter. Your cue is past; it is "never tire." 

Flu. O, — "As true as truest horse, that yet would 
never tire." 



82 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM m. i 

[Re-enter Robin Goodfellow, and Bottom with 
an ass's head.] 

Bot. "If I were, fair Thisby, I were only thine." 
Quin. O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. 
Pray, masters! fly, masters! Help! 

[Exeunt [Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, 
and Starveling]. 
Robin. I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round, 105 
Through bog, through bush, through brake, 
through brier. 
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, 
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire ; 
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. no 

[Exit. 
Bot. Why do they run away? This is a knavery 
of them to make me afeard. 

Re-enter Sxout. 

Snout. O Bottom, thou art chang'd ! What do I 
see on thee? 

Bot. What do you see? You see an ass-head of 115 
your own, do you? [Exit Snout.] 

Re-enter Quince. 

Quin. Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art 
translated. 

[Exit. 
Bot. I see their knavery; this is to make an ass 




m. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM S3 

120 of me, to fright me, if they could. But I will not 

stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk 

up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall 

hear I am not afraid. [Sings.] 

"The ousel cock so black of hue, 

125 With orange-tawny bill, 

The throstle with his note so true, 
The wren with little quill," — 
Tita. [Awaking.] What angel wakes me from 

my flowery bed ? 
Bot. [Sings.] 

"The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
130 The plain-song cuckoo gray, 

Whose note full many a man doth mark, 
And dares not answer nay;" — 
for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a 
bird ? Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry 
135 "cuckoo" never so? 

Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. 
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note; 
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape ; 
And thy fair virtues, force perforce, doth move me 
140 On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. 

Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little 

reason for that; and yet, to say the truth, reason and 

love keep little company together now-a-days; the 

more the pity that some honest neighbours will not 

145 make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion. 

Tita. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. 

Bot. Not so, neither ; but if I had wit enough to 



84 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM m. i. 

get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine 
own turn. 

Tita. Out of this wood do not desire to go; 150 

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. 
I am a spirit of no common rate ; 
The summer still doth tend upon my state; 
And I do love thee ; therefore, go with me. 
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, 155 

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, 
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep. 
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so 
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. 
Peaseblossom ! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed ! 160 

Enter Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and 

MUSTARDSEED. 

Peas. Ready. 

Cob. And I. 

Moth. And I. 

Mus. And I. 

All. Where shall we go ? 

Tita. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. 
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes ; 
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; 165 

The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, 
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 
To have mv love to bed and to arise ; 



in. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 85 

170 And pluck the wings from painted butterflies 
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. 
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. 
Peas. Hail, mortal! 
Cob. Hail! 
175 Moth. Hail! 
Mm. Hail! 

Bot. I cry jour worships mercy, heartily. I 
beseech your worship's name. 
Cob. Cobweb. 
180 Bot. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good 
Master Cobweb. If I cut my ringer, I shall make 
bold with you. Your name, honest gentleman ? 
Peas. Peaseblossom. 

Bot. I pray you commend me to Mistress Squash, 

185 your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. 

Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of 

more acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you, 

sir? 

Mus. Mustardseed. 
190 Bot. Good Master Mustardseed, I know your 
patience well. That same cowardly, giant-like ox»beef 
hath devoured many a gentleman of your house. I 
promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water 
ere now. I desire you more acquaintance, good 
195 Master Mustardseed. 

Tita. Come, wait upon him ; lead him to my 

bower. 
The moon methinks looks with a watery eye, 
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, 



86 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS DREAM 



in. 11. 



Lamenting some enforced chastity. 
Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently. 2 oo 

[Exeunt. 



[Scene II. Another part of the wood.] 

Enter Oberon. 

Obe. I wonder if Titania be awak'd ; 
Then, what it was that next came in her eye, 
Which she must dote on in extremity. 

Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 

Here comes my messenger. 

How now, mad spirit! 
What night-rule now about this haunted grove? 5 

Robin. My mistress with a monster is in love. 
Near to her close and consecrated bower, 
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, 
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, 10 

Were met together to rehearse a play 
Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day. 
The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort, 
Who Pyramus presented in their sport, 
Forsook his scene and ent'red in a brake. 15 

When I did him at this advantage take, 
An ass's nole I fixed on his head. 
Anon his Thisby must be answered, 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 87 

And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy, 

As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, 

Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, 

Rising and cawing at the gun's report, 

Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky, 

So, at his sight, away his fellows fly ; 

And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls ; 

He murder cries, and help from Athens calls. 

Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus 

strong, 
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong; 
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch ; 
Some sleeves, some hats,, from yielders all things 

catch. 
I led them on in this distracted fear, 
And left sweet Pyramus translated there; 
When in that moment, so it came to pass, 
Titania wak'd and straightway lov'd an ass. 

Obe. This falls out better than I could devise. 
But hast thou yet latch'd the Athenian's eyes 
With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do? 

Robin. I took him sleeping, — that is finish'd too, — 
And the Athenian woman by his side ; 
That, when he wak'd, of force she must be ey'd. 

Enter Demetrius and Hermia. 

Obe. Stand close; this is the same Athenian. 
Robin. This is the woman, but not this the man. 
Dem. O, why rebuke you him that loves you so? 
Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe. 



88 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM m. ii. 

Her. Now I but chide; but I should use thee- 
worse, 45 

For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse. 
If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, 
Being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in knee-deep, 
And kill me too. 

The sun was not so true unto the day 50 

As he to me : would he have stolen away 
From sleeping Hermia? I'll believe as soon 
This whole earth may be bor'd and that the moon 
May through the center creep and so displease 
Her brother's noontide with the Antipodes. 55 

It cannot be but thou hast murd'red him; 
So should a murderer look, so dread, so grim. 

Dem. So should the murdered look, and so should I, 
Pierc'd through the heart with your stern cruelty ; 
Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear, 60 

As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere. 

Her. What 's this to my Lysander ? Where is he ? 
Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me? 

Dem. I had rather give his carcass to my hounds. 

Her. Out, dog! out, cur! thou driv'st me past 
the bounds 65 

Of maiden's patience. Hast thou slain him, then? 
Henceforth be never numb'red among men ! 
O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake ! 
Durst thou have look'd upon him being awake, 
And hast thou kill'd him sleeping? O brave touch! 70 
Could not a worm, an adder, do so much? 
An adder did it ; for with doubler tongue 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 89 

Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung. 

Dem. You spend your passion on a mispris'd mood. 
75 I am not guilty of Lysander's blood ; 
Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell. 

Her. I pray thee, tell me then that he is well. 
Dem. An if I could, what should I get therefore? 
Her. A privilege never to see me more. 
so And from thy hated presence part I so : 
See me no more, whether he be dead or no. 

[Exit. 
Dem. There is no following her in this fierce vein ; 
Here therefore for a while I will remain. 
So sorrow's heaviness doth heavier grow 
85 For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe ; 
Which now in some slight measure it will pay, 
If for his tender here I make some stay. 

[Lies down [and sleeps]. 
Obe. What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken 
quite 
And laid the love-juice on some true-love's sight. 
90 Of thy misprision must perforce ensue 

Some true love turn'd and not a false turn'd true. 
Robin. Then fate o'er-rules, that, one man holding 
troth, 
A million fail, confounding oath on oath. 

Obe. About the wood go swifter than the wind, 
95 And Helena of Athens look thou find. 
All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer 
With sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear. 
By some illusion see thou bring her here. 



90 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM in. ii. 

I'll charm his eyes against she do appear. 

Robin. I go, I go; look how I go, 100 

Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow. 

[Exit. 
Obe. Flower of this purple dye 
Hit with Cupid's archery, 
Sink in apple of his eye. 

When his love he doth espy, 105 

Let her shine as gloriously 
As the Venus of the sky. 
When thou wak'st, if she be by, 
Beg of her for remedy. 

Re-enter Robin Goodfellow. 

Robin. Captain of our fairy band, no 

Helena is here at hand ; 

And the youth, mistook by me, 

Pleading for a lover's fee. 

Shall we their fond pageant see? 

Lord, what fools these mortals be ! 115 

Obe. Stand aside. The noise they make 

Will cause Demetrius to awake. 
Robin. Then will two at once woo one; 

That must needs be sport alone. 

And those things do best please me 120 

That befall preposterously. 

Enter Lysander and Helexa. 

Lys. Why should you think that I should woo in 
scorn ? 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 91 

Scorn and derision never come in tears. 
Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, 
125 In their nativity all truth appears. 

How can these things in me seem scorn to you, 
Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true? 
Hel. You do advance your cunning more and more. 
When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray! 
130 These vows are Hermia's ; will you give her o'er ? 
Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh. 
Your vows to her and me, put in two scales, 
Will even weigh, and both as light as tales. 

Lys. I had no judgment when to her I swore. 
135 He I. Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o'er. 
Lys. Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you. 
Dem. [Jivaking.] O Helen, goddess, nymph, 
perfect, divine ! 
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne ? 
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show 
ho Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow ! 
That pure congealed white, high Taurus' snow, 
Fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow 
When thou hold'st up thy hand. O, let me kiss 
This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! 
145 He I. O spite ! O hell ! I see you all are bent 
To set against me for your merriment. 
If you were civil and knew courtesy, 
You would not do me thus much injury. 
Can you not hate me, as I know you do, 
150 But you must join in souls to mock me too? 
If you were men, as men you are in show, 



92 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS DREAM hi. ii. 

You would not use a gentle lady so ; 

To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts, 

When I am sure you hate me with your hearts. 

You both are rivals, and love Hermia; 155 

And now both rivals, to mock Helena. 

A trim exploit, a manly enterprise, 

To conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes 

With your derision ! None of noble sort 

Would so offend a virgin and extort 160 

A poor soul's patience, all to make you sport. 

Lys. You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so; 
For you love Hermia; this you know I know. 
And here, with all good will, with all my heart, 
In Hermia's love, I yield you up my part ; 165 

And yours of Helena to me bequeath, 
Whom I do love and will do till my death. 

Hel. Never did mockers waste more idle breath. 

Deni. Lysander, keep thy Hermia ; I will none. 
If e'er I lov'd her, all that love is gone. 170 

My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn 'd, 
And now to Helen is it home return 'd, 
There to remain. 

Lys. Helen, it is not so. 

De in. Disparage not the faith thou dost not know, 
Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear. 175 

Look, where thy love comes ; yonder is thy dear. 



Re-enter Hermia. 

Her. Dark night, that from the eye his function 
takes, 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 93 

The ear more quick of apprehension makes ; 
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, 
iso It pays the hearing double recompense. 

Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found ; 
Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound. 
But why unkindly didst thou leave me so? 

Lys. Why should he stay, whom love doth press 

to go? 
Her. What love could press Lysander from my 
185 side ? 

Lys. Lysander's love, that would not let him bide, 
Fair Helena, who more engilds the night 
Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light. 
Why seek'st thou me? Could not this make thee 
know, 
190 The hate I bare thee made me leave thee so ? 

Her. You speak not as you think. It cannot be. 
Hel. Lo, she is one of this confederacy! 
Now I perceive they have conjoin'd all three 
To fashion this false sport, in spite of me. 
195 Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid ! 

Have you conspir'd, have you with these contriv'd 
To bait me with this foul derision ? 
Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd, 
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, 
200 When we have chid the hasty-footed time 
For parting us, — O, is all forgot? 
All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? 
We,, Hermia, like two artificial gods, 
Have with our needles created both one flower, 



94 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM m. ii. 

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, 205 

Both warbling of one song, both in one key, 

As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, 

Had been incorporate. So we grew together, 

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, 

But yet an union in partition ; 210 

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; 

So with two seeming bodies, but one heart ; 

Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, 

Due but to one and crowned with one crest. 

And will you rend our ancient love asunder, 215 

To join with men in scorning your poor friend? 

It is not friendly, 't is not maidenly. 

Our sex as well as I, may chide you for it, 

Though I alone do feel the injury. 

Her. I am amazed at your passionate words. 220 

I scorn you not'; it seems that you scorn me. 

Hel. Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn, 
To follow me and praise my eyes and face ? 
And made your other love, Demetrius, 
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot, 22.5 

To call me goddess, nj-mph, divine and rare, 
Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this 
To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander 
Deny your love, so rich within his soul, 
And tender me, forsooth, affection, 230 

But by your setting on, by your consent ? 
What though I be not so in grace as you, 
So hung upon with love, so fortunate, 
But miserable most, to love unlov'd . J 



m. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 95 

235 This you should pity rather than despise. 

Her. I understand not what you mean by this. 

He/. Ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks, 
Make mouths upon me when I turn my back, 
Wink each at other, hold the sweet jest up; 
240 This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled. 
•If you have any pity, grace, or manners, 
You would not make me such an argument. 
But fare ye well ; 't is partly my own fault, 
Which death or absence soon shall remedy. 
245 Lys. Stay, gentle Helena ; hear my excuse, 
My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena! 

Hel. O excellent ! 

Her. Sweet, do not scorn her so. 

Dem. If she cannot entreat, I can-compel. 

Lys. Thou canst compel no more than she entreat. 
Thy threats have no more strength than her weak 
250 . prayers. 

Helen, I love thee; by my life, I do! 

I swear by that which I will lose for thee, 

To prove him false that says I love thee not. 

Dem. I say I love thee more than he can do. 
255 Lys. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove, it too. 

Dem. Quick, come! 

Her. Lysander, whereto tends all this? 

Lys. Away, you Ethiope ! 

Dem. No, no; he'll [but] 

Seem to break loose. Take on as you would follow, 
But yet come not. You are a tame man, go! 



96 A MIDSUMMER-XIGHTS DREAM in. ii. 

Lys. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr ! Vile thing, 

let loose, 260 

Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent ! 

Her. Why are you grown so rude ? What change 
is this? 
Sweet love, — 

Lys. Thy love ! Out, tawny Tartar, out ! 
Out, loathed medicine! O hated potion, hence! 

Her. Do you not jest? 

Hel. Yes, sooth ; and so do you. 2 65 

Lys. Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee. 

Dem. I would I had your bond, for I perceive 
A weak bond holds you. I'll not trust your word. 

Lys. What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her 
dead? 
Although I hate her, I'll not harm her so. 270 

Her. What, can you do me greater harm than 
hate? 
Hate me! wherefore? O me! what news, my love! 
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander? 
I am as fair now as I was erewhile. 

Since night you lov'd me ; yet since night you left me : 275 
Why, then you left me — O, the gods forbid ! — 
In earnest, shall I say? 

Lys. Ay, by my life ; 

And never did desire to see thee more. 
Therefore be out of hope, of question, doubt; 
Be certain, nothing truer; 't is no jest 280 

That I do hate thee and love Helena. 

Her. O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom! 



hi. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 97 

You thief of love ! What, have you come by night 

And stolen my love's heart from him ? 

Hel. Fine, i' faith! 

2S5 Have you no modesty, no maiden shame, 

No touch of bashfulness ? What, will you tear 

Impatient answers from my gentle tongue? 

Fie, fie ! you counterfeit, you puppet, you ! 

Her. Puppet? Why so? Ay, that way goes the 
game. 
290 Now I perceive that she hath made compare 

Between our statures ; she hath urg'd her height ; 

And with her personage, her tall personage, 

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him. 

And are you grown so high in his esteem, 
295 Because I am so dwarfish and so low? 

How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak, 

How low am I ? I am not yet so low 

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. 

Hel. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, 
300 Let her not hurt me. I was never curst ; 

I have no gift at all in shrewishness ; 

I am a right maid for my cowardice. 

Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think, 

Because she is something lower than myself, 

That I can match her. 
305 Her. Lower ! hark, again. 

Hel. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me. 

I evermore did love you, Hermia, 

Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong'd you ; 

Save that, in love unto Demetrius, 



98 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM in. ii. 

I told him of your stealth unto this wood. 310 

He followed you ; for love I followed him ; 

But he hath chid me hence and threat'ned me 

To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too. 

And now, so you will let me quiet go, 

To Athens will I bear my folly back • 315 

And follow you no further. Let me go. 

You see how simple and how fond I am. 

Her. Why, get you gone; who is 't that hinders 
you ? 

Hel. A foolish heart, that I leave here behind. 

Her. What, with Lysander? 

Hel. With Demetrius. 320 

Lys. Be not afraid ; she shall not harm thee, 
Helena. 

Dem. No sir, she shall not, though you take her 
part. 

Hel. O, when she 's angry, she is keen and shrewd ! 
She was a vixen when she went to school ; 
And though she be but little, she is fierce. 325 

Her. Little again ! Nothing but low and little ! 
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? 
Let me come to her. 

Lys. Get you gone, you dwarf, 

You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; 
You bead, you acorn. 

Dem. 'You are too officious 330 

In her behalf that scorns your services. 
Let her alone ; speak not of Helena ; 
Take not her part ; for, if thou dost intend 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 99 

Never so little show of love to her, 
Thou shalt aby it. 
335 Lys. Now she holds me not. 

Now follow, if thou dar'st, to try whose right, 
Of thine or mine, is most in Helena. 

De?n. Follow! * Nay, I'll go with thee, cheek by 
jowl. 

[Exeunt Lysander and Demetrius. 
Her. You, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you. 
Nay, go not back. 
340 Hel. I will not trust you, I, 

Nor longer stay in your curst company. 
Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray, 
My legs are longer though, to run away. 

[Exit]. 
Her. I am amaz'd, and know not what to say. 

[Exit. 
345 Obe. This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak'st, 
Or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully. 

Robin. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook. 
Did not you tell me I should know the man 
By the Athenian garments he had on ? 
350 And so far blameless proves my enterprise, 
That I have 'nointed an Athenian's eyes; 
And so far am I glad it so did sort, 
As this their jangling I esteem a sport. 

Obe. Thou see'st these lovers seek a place to fight; 
355 Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night. 
The starry welkin cover thou anon 
With drooping fog as black as Acheron, 



100 A MIDSUMMER-XIGHT'S DREAM in. ii. 

And lead these testy rivals so astray 
As one come not within another's way. 
Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue, 360 

Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong; 
And sometime rail thou like Demetrius ; 
And from each other look thou lead them thus, 
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep 
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep. 365 

Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye ; 
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property, 
To take from' thence all error with his might, 
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. 
When they next wake, all this derision 370 

Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision ; 
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, 
With league whose date till death shall never end. 
Whiles I in this affair do thee employ. 
I'll to my queen and beg her Indian boy; 37- 

And then I will her charmed eye release 
From monster's view, and all things shall be peace. 
Robin. My fairy lord, this must be done with 
haste, 
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, 
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger, 
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, 
Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all, 
That in crossways and floods have burial, 
Already to their wormy beds are gone. 
For fear lest day should look their shames upon, «5 

They wilfully themselves exile from light 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER- NIGHT'S DREAM 101 

And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night. 

Obe. But we are spirits of another sort. 
I with the morning's love have oft made sport, 
390 And, like a forester, the groves may tread, 
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, 
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. 
But, notwithstanding, haste, make no delay. 
395 We may effect this business yet ere dav. 

[Exit.] 
Robin. Up and down, up and down, 
I will lead them up and down. 
I am fear'd in field and town. 
Goblin, lead them up and down. 
4oo Here comes one. 

Re-enter Lysander. 
Lys. Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak 

thou now. 
Robin. Here, villain; drawn and ready. Where 

art thou? 
Lys. I will be with thee straight. 
Robin. Follow me, then, 

To plainer ground. 

[Exit Lysander, as following the voice.] 

Re-enter Demetrius. 
Dem. Lysander, speak again! 

405 Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled ? 

Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy 
head? 



102 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM m. ii. 

Robin. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the 
stars, 
Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, 
And wilt not come? Come, recreant; come, thou 

child, 
I'll whip thee with a rod. He is denTd 410 

That draws a sword on thee. 

Dem. Yea, art thou there? 

Robin. Follow my voice. We'll try no manhood 

here. [Exeunt. 

[Re-enter Lysander.] 

Lys. He goes before me and still dares me on. 
When I come where he calls, then he is gone. 
The villain is much lighter-heel'd than I ; 415 

I followed fast, but faster he did fly, 
That fallen am I in dark uneven way, 
And here will rest me. Come, thou gentle day ! 

[Lies down. 
For if but once thou show me thy grey light, 
I'll find Demetrius and revenge this spite. 420 

[Sleeps.) 

Re-enter Robin Goodfellow and Demetrius. 

Robin. Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com'st thou 
not? 

Dem. Abide me, if thou dar'st; for well I wot 
Thou runn'st before me, shifting every place, 
And dar'st not stand, nor look me in the face. 
Where art thou now? 



in. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 103 

425 Robin. Come hither; I am here. 

Dern. Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt 
buy this dear, 
If ever I thy face by daylight see. 
Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me 
To measure out my length on this cold bed. 
430 By day's approach look to be visited. 

[Lies down and sleeps]. 

Re-enter Helena. 
Hel. O weary night, O long and tedious night, 

Abate thy hours ! Shine, comforts, from the east, 
That I may back to Athens by daylight, 
From these that my poor company detest : 
435 And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, 
Steal me awhile from mine own company. 

[Lies down and] sleeps. 
Robin. Yet but three? Come one more; 
Two of both kinds makes up four. 
Here she comes, curst and sad : 
440 Cupid is a knavish lad, 

Thus to make poor females mad. 

Re-enter Hermia. 
Her. Never so weary, never so in woe, 

Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers, 
I can no further crawl, no further go ; 
W5 My legs can keep no pace with my desires. 
Here will I rest me till the break of day. 
Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray! 

[Lies down and sleeps.] 



104 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM in. ii. 

Puck. On the ground 

Sleep sound : 

I '11 apply 450 

To your eye, 
Gentle lover, remedy. 
[Squeezing the juice on Lysanders eyes.] 
When thou wak'st, 
Thou tak'st 

True delight 455 

In the sight 
Of thy former lady's eye : 
And the country proverb known, 
That every man should take his own, 
In your waking shall be shown : 460 

Jack shall have Jill ; 
Nought shall go ill; 
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be 
well. [Exit] 



ACT IV. 

[Scene I. The same. Lysander, Demetrius, 
Helena, and Hermia lying asleep.'] 

Enter Titania and Clown [Bottom ; Peaseblos- 
som, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed,] and 
[other] Fairies [attending] ; Oberon behind 
[unseen]. 

Tit a. Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, 

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, 
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, 

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. 
5 Bot. Where 's Peaseblossom ? 

Peas. Ready. 

Bot. Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where 's 
Mounsieur Cobweb ? 

Cob. Ready. 
10 Bot. Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get 
you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a 
red-hipp'd humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, 
good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not 
fret yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, 
15 good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not ; 
I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey- 
bag, signior. Where 's Mounsieur Mustardseed ? 

105 



106 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM iv. i. 

Mus. Ready. 

Bot. Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. 
Pray you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur. 

Mus. What 's your will ? 

Bot. Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cava- 
lery Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber's, 
mounsieur; for methinks I am marvellous hairy 
about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my 
hair do but tickle me, I must scratch. 

Tita. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet 
love ? 

Bot. I have a reasonable good ear in music. 
Let's have the tongs and the bones. 

[Music. Tongs. Rural music. 

Tita. Or say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat. 

Bot. Truly, a peck of provender : I could munch 
3'our good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire 
to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay. hath no 
fellow. 

Tita. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek 
The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. 

Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried 
peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir 
me ; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. 

Tita. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 
Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. 

[Exeunt fairies.] 
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 
Gently entwist ; the female ivy so 
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 



iv. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 107 

O, how I love thee ! how I dote on thee ! 

[They sleep.} 

Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 

Obe. [Advancing.'] Welcome, good Robin. 

4 5 See'st thou this sweet sight? 

Her dotage now I do begin to pity: 
For, meeting her of late behind the wood, 
Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool, 
I did upbraid her and fall out with her ; 

50 For she his hairy temples then had rounded 
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers ; 
And that same dew, which sometime on the buds 
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, 
Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes 

55 Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. 
When I had at my pleasure taunted her 
And she in mild terms begg'd my patience, 
I then did ask of her her changeling child ; 
Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent 

60 To bear him to my bower in fairy land. 
And, now I have the boy, I will undo 
This hateful imperfection of her eyes ; 
And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp 
From off the head of this Athenian swain, 

65 That, he awaking when the other do, 
May all to Athens back again repair, 
And think no more of this night's accidents 
But as the fierce vexation of a dream. 
But first I will release the fairy queen. 

[Touching her eyes.~\ 



108 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM iv. L 

Be as thou wast wont to be ; "o 

See as thou wast wont to see : 
Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower 
Hath such force and blessed power. 
Now, my Tftania; wake you, my sweet queen. 

Tita. My Oberon ! what visions have I seen ! 
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass. 
Obe. There lies your love. 

Tita. How came these things to pass ? 

O, how T mine eyes do loathe his visage now ! 

Obe. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head. 
Titania, music call ; and strike more dead so 

Than common sleep of all these five the sense. 

Tita. Music, ho ! music, such as charmeth sleep ! 

[Music, still. 
Robin. Now, when thou wak'st, with thine own 

fool's eyes peep. 
Obe. Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands 
w T ith me, 
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be. 85 

Now thou and I are new in amity 

And will to-morrow midnight solemnly 
Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly 
And bless it to all fair prosperity. 

There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be 90 

Wedded, w T ith Theseus, all in jollity. 
Robin. Fairy king, attend, and mark; 

I do hear the morning lark. 
Obe. Then., my queen, in silence sad 

Trip we after the night's shade. 95 



iv. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 109 

We the globe can compass soon, 
Swifter than the wandering moon. 
Tita. Come my lord, and in our flight 
Tell me how it came this night 
100 That I sleeping here was found 

With these mortals on the ground. 

[Exeunt. Horns winded [within]. 

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and all his train. 

The. Go, one of you, find out the forester, 

For now our observation is perform'd, 

And since we have the vaward of the day, 
io5 My love shall hear the music of my hounds. 

Uncouple in the western valley, let them go. 

Despatch, I say, and find the forester. 

[Exit an attendant.] 

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top 

And mark the musical confusion 
uo Of hounds and echo in conjunction. 

Hip. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, 

When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear 

With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear 

Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, 
ii5 The skies, the fountains, every region near 

Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard 

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. 

The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 

So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung 
120 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 

Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; 



110 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM iv. i. 

Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, 
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. 125 

Judge when you hear. But, soft! what nymphs are 
these? 

Ege. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep, 
And this, Lysander ; this Demetrius is ; 
This Helena, old Nedar's Helena. 
I wonder of their being here together. 130 

The. No doubt they rose up early to observe 
The rite of May, and, hearing our intent, 
Came here in grace of our solemnity. 
But speak, Egeus ; is not this the day 
That Hermia should give answer of her choice? 135 

Ege. It is, my lord. 

The. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their 
horns. 

[Horns and shout icithin. Lys., Dem., 
Hel., and Her. zvake and start up. 
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past ; 
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now? 

Lys. Pardon, my lord. 

The. I pray you all, stand up. 140 

I know you two are rival enemies; 
How comes this gentle concord in the world,, 
That hatred is so far from jealousy, 
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity? 

Lys. My lord, I shall reply amazedly, 145 

Half sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear, 



iv. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 111 

I cannot truly say how I came here. 

But, as I think, — for truly would I speak, 

And now I do bethink me, so it is, — 
150 I came with Hermia hither. Our intent 

Was to be gone from Athens, where we might, 

Without the peril of the Athenian law — 

Egc. Enough, enough, my lord ; you have enough. 

I beg the law, the law,, upon his head. 
155 They would have stolen away ; they would, Demetrius, 

Thereby to have defeated you and me, 

You of your wife, and me of my consent, 

Of my consent that she should be your wife. 

Dem. My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth, 
160 Of this their purpose hither to this wood ; 

And I in fury hither followed them, 

Fair Helena in fancy following me. 

But, my good lord, I wot not by what power, — 

But by some power it is, — my love to Hermia, 
165 Melted as [is] the snow, seems to me now 

As the remembrance of an idle gaud 

Which in my childhood I did dote upon ; 

And all the faith., the virtue of my heart, 

The object and the pleasure of mine eye, 
170 Is only Helena. To her, my lord, 

Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia; 

But like a sickness did I loathe this food ; 

But, as in health, come to my natural taste, 

Now I do wish it, love it, long for it, 
175 And will for evermore be true to k. 

The. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met; 



112 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM iv. 1 

Of this discourse we more will hear anon. 
Egeus, I will overbear your will ; 
For in the temple, by and by, with us 
These couples shall eternally be knit. iso 

And, for the morning now is something worn, 
Our purpos'd hunting shall be set aside. 
Away with us to Athens ; three and three, 
We '11 hold a feast in great solemnity. 
Come, Hippolyta. iss 

[Exeunt The. , Hip., Ege., and train. 

Dem. These things seem small and undistinguish- 
able, 
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. 

Her. Methinks I see these things with parted eye, 
When every thing seems double. 

He I. So methinks ; 

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, 190 

Mine own, and not mine own. 

Dem. Are you sure that we 're awake? It seems 
to me 
That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think 
The Duke was here, and bid us follow him? 

Her. Yea; and my father. 

Hel And Hippolyta. 195 

Lys. And he did bid us follow to the temple. 

Dem. Why, then, we are awake. Let 's follow 
him; 
And by the way let us recount our dreams. 

[Exeunt lovers. 

Bot. [Auaking.] When my cue comes, call me. 



iv. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 113 

200 and I will answer. My next is, "Most fair Pyramus." 
Heigh-ho ! Peter Quince ! Flute, the bellows-mender ! 
Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God 's my life, stolen 
hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare 
vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to 

205 say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go 
about to expound this dream. Methought I was — 
there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, — 
and methought I had, — but man is but a patch'd fool, 
if he will offer to say what methought I had. The 

210 eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not 
seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to 
conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream 
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of 
this dream. It shall be called Bottom's Dream, 

215 because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the 
latter end of a play, before the Duke ; peradventure, 
to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her 
death. [Exit. 



[Scene II. Athens. Quince's house.'] 

Enter Quince, Flute, Snout, and STARVELING. 

Quin. Have you sent to Bottom's house? Is he 
come home yet? 

Star. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is 
transported. 
5 Flu. If he comes not, then the play is marr'd. It 
goes not forward, doth it? 



114 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM iv. if. 

Qu'in. It is not possible. You have not a man in 
all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he. 

Flu. No, he hath simply the best wit of any handi- 
craft man in Athens. 10 

Snout. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a 
very paramour for a sweet voice. 

Flu. You must say "paragon"; a paramour is, 
God bless us, a thing of naught. 

Enter Snug. 

Snug. Masters, the Duke is coming from the 15 
temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies 
more married. If our sport had gone forward, we 
had all been made men. 

Flu. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost 
sixpence a day during his life; he could not have 20 
scaped sixpence a day. An the Duke had not given 
him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I '11 be 
hang'd. He would have deserved it. Sixpence a day 
in Pyramus, or nothing. 

Enter Bottom. 

Bot. Where are these lads? Where are these 25 
hearts ? 

Qu'in. Bottom! O most courageous day! O most 
happy hour! 

Bot. Masters, I am to discourse wonders, but ask 
me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. 30 
I will tell you everything, right as it fell out. 

Qu'in. Let us hear, sweet Bottom. 



iv. ii. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 115 

Bot. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you 
is, that the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel 

35 together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to 
your pumps ; meet presently at the palace ; every 
man look o'er his part ; for the short and the long is, 
our play is preferr'd. In any case, let Thisby have 
clean linen ; and let not him that plays the lion pare 

40 his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion's claws. 
And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for 
we are to utter sweet breath ; and I do not doubt but 
to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. No more 
words; away! go, away! 

[Exeunt. 



ACT V. 

[Scene I. Athens. The palace of Theseus.] 

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate, Lords 
[and Attendants]. 

Hip. 'T is strange, my Theseus, that these lovers 
speak of. 

The . More strange than true ; I never may believe 
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. 
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 5 

More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact. 
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; 
That is, the madman. The lover, all as frantic. 10 

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. 
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 

heaven ; 
And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 15 

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 
Such tricks hath strong imagination, 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 117 

That, if it would but apprehend some joy, 
20 It comprehends some bringer of that joy; 

Or in the night, imagining some fear, 

How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear ! 

Hip. But all the story of the night told over, 

And all their minds transfigur'd so together, 
25 More witnesseth than fancy's images, 

And grows to something of great constancy ; 

But, howsoever, strange and admirable. 

Enter lovers, Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and 
Helena. 

The. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. 
Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love 
Accompany your hearts ! 
30 Lys. More than to us 

Wait in your royal walks, )'our board, your bed! 
The. Come now ; what masques, what dances 
shall we have, 
To wear away this long age of three hours 
Between our after-supper and bed-time? 
35 Where is our usual manager of mirth ? 
What revels are in hand ? Is there no play 
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour? 
Call Philostrate. 

Phil. Here, mighty Theseus. 

The. Say, what abridgement have you for this 
evening? 
40 What masque ? what music ? How shall we beguile 
The lazy time, if not with some delight? 



118 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

Phil. There is a brief how many sports are ripe. 
Make choice of which your Highness will see first. 

[Giving a paper.] 

The. [Reads.] "The battle with the Centaurs, to 
be sung 
• By an Athenian eunuch to the harp." 45 

We '11 none of that : that have I told my love, 
In glory of my kinsman Hercules. 
"The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, 
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage." 
That is an old device ; and it was play'd 50 

When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. 
"The thrice three Muses mourning for the death 
Of Learning, late deceas'd in beggary." 
That is some satire, keen and critical, 
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. 55 

"A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus 
And his love Thisbe ; very tragical mirth." 
Merry and tragical ! Tedious and brief ! 
That is, hot ice and w r ondrous strange snow. 
How shall we find the concord of this discord ? 60 

Phil. A play there is, my lord, some ten w T ords 
long, 
Which is as brief as I have known a play; 
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, 
Which makes it tedious ; for in all the play 
There is not one word apt, one player fitted. 65 

And tragical, my noble lord, it is; 
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself. 
Which, when I saw T rehears'd, I must confess, 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 119 

Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears 
70 The passion of loud laughter never shed. 
The. What are they that do play it? 
Phil. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, 
Which never labour'd in their minds till now, 
And now have toiled their unbreathed memories 
75 With this same play, against your nuptial. & "w-aA/^^tJ 
The. And we will hear it. >j 

Phil. No, my noble lord ; 

It is not for you. I have. heard it over, 
And it is nothing, nothing in the world ; 
Unless you can find sport in their intents, 
so Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain, 
To do you service. 

The. I will hear that play ; 

For never anything can be amiss, 
When simpleness and duty tender it. 
Go, bring them in ; and take your places, ladies. 

[Exit Philostrdte.] 
85 Hip. I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged, 
And duty in his service perishing. 

The. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such 

thing. 
Hip. He says they can do nothing in this kind. 
The. The kinder we, to give them thanks for 
nothing. 
90 Our sport shall be to take what they mistake ; 
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect 
Takes it in might, not merit. 
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed 



120 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i 

To greet me with premeditated welcomes; 

Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, 95 

Make periods in the midst of sentences, 

Throttle their practis'd accent in their fears, 

And in conclusion dumbly have broke off, 

Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sw T eet, 

Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome ; 100 

And in the modesty of fearful duty 

I read as much as from the rattling tongue 

Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 

Love, therefore, and tongue-ti'd simplicity 

In least speak most, to my capacity. 105 

[Re-enter Philostrate.] 
Phil. So please your Grace, the Prologue is address'd. • 
The. Let him approach. 

[Flourish of trumpets. 

Enter [Quince for] the Prologue. 
Pro. If we offend, it is with our good will. 

That you should think, we come not to offend, 
But with good will. To show our simple skill, 110 

That is the true beginning of our end. 
Consider then we come but in despite. 

We do not come as minding to content you, 
Our true intent is. All for your delight 

We are not here. That you should here repent 

you, us 

The actors are at hand, and by their show 
You shall know all that you are like to know. 

The. This fellow doth not stand upon points. 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 121 

Lys. He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; 
120 he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord : it 
is not enough to speak, but to speak true. 

Hip. Indeed he hath play'd on this prologue like 
a child on a recorder ; a sound, but not in government. 
The. His speech was like a tangled chain ; nothing 
125 impaired, but all disordered. Who is next? 

Enter with a trumpet before them, Pyramus and 
Thisbe, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion. 

Pro. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; 

But wonder on, till truth make all things plain. 
This man is Pyramus, if you would know ; 

This beauteous lady Thisby is certain. 
130 This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present 

Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder ; 
And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are 
content 

To whisper. At the which let no man wonder. 
This man with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn, 
135 Presenteth Moonshine ; for, if you will know, 
By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn 

To meet at Ninus' tomb, there, there to woo. 
This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name, 
The trusty Thisby, coming first by night, 
140 Did scare away, or rather did affright ; 
And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall, 

Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain. 
Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall, 

And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain ; 



122 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. I 

Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, 145 

He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast ; 
And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade, 

His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest, 
Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain 
At large discourse, while here they do remain. 150 

[Exeunt Prologue, Thisbe, Lion, and 
Moonshine. 

The. I wonder if the lion be to speak. 

Dem. No wonder, my lord; one lion may, when 
many asses do. 

Wall. In this same interlude it doth befall 
That I, one Snout by name, present a wall; 
And such a wall, as I would have you think. 
That had in it a crannied hole or chink, 
Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby, 
Did whisper often very secretly. 

This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone doth show igo 
That I am that same wall ; the truth is so ; 
And this the cranny is, right and sinister, 
Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper. 

The. Would you desire lime and hair to speak 
better? 165 

Dem. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard 
discourse, my lord. 

Enter PYRAMUS. 

The . Pyramus draws near the wall. Silence ! 
Pyr. O grim-look'd night ! O night with hue so 
black! 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 123 

170 O night, which ever art when day is not ! 
O night, O night ! alack, alack, alack, 

I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot ! 
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, 

That stand'st between her father's ground an<3 
mine! 
175 Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, 

Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine 
eyne ! 

[Wall holds up his fingers.} 
Thanks, courteous wall ; Jove shield thee well for this ! 

But what see I ? No Thisby do I see. 
O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss! 
xso Curs'd be thy stones for thus deceiving me ! 

The. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should 
curse again. 

Pyr. No, in truth, sir, he should not. "Deceiving 
me" is Thisby's cue. She is to enter now, and I am 
185 to spy her through the wall. You shall see it will 
fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes. 

Enter Thisbe. 

This. O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, 
For parting my fair Pyramus and me ! 

My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones, 
1% Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee. 

Pyr. I see a voice ! Now will I to the chink, 
To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face. 

Thisby! 

This. My love thou art, my love I think. 



124 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

Pyr. Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's 
grace ; 
And, like Limander, am I trusty still. 195 

This. And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill. 

Pyr. Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true. 

This. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you. 

Pyr. O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall ! 

This. I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all. 200 

Pyr. Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straight- 
way ? 

This. 'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay. 
[Exeunt Pyramus and Thisbe.] 

Wall. Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so ; 

And, being done, thus Wall awav doth go. r „ . 

[Exit. 

The. Now is the moon used between the two 205 
neighbours. 

Dem. No remedy, my lord, when walls are so 
wilful to hear without warning. 

Hip. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. 

The . The best in this kind are but shadows ; and 210 
the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. 

Hip. It must be your imagination then, and not 
theirs. . 

The. If we imagine no worse of them than they 
of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here 215 
come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion. 

Enter Lion and Moonshine. 
Lion. You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear 
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 125 

May now perchance both quake and tremble here, 
220 When Hon rough in wildest ra^e doth roar. 
Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am 
A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam; 
For, if I should as lion come in strife 
Into this place, 't were pity on my life. 
225 The. A very gentle beast, and of a good con- 
science. 

Dem. The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er 
I saw. 

Lys. This lion is a very fox for his valour. 
230 The. True; and a goose for his discretion. 

Dem. Not so, my lord ; for his valour cannot 
carry his discretion, and the fox carries the goose. 

The. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his 
valour; for the goose carries not the fox. It is well ; 
235 leave it to his discretion, and let us hearken to the 
moon. 

Moon. This lantern doth the horned moon pre- 
sent ; — 
Dem. He should have worn the horns on his head. 
The. He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible 
240 within the circumference. 

Moon. This lantern doth the horned moon present ; 
Myself the man i' the moon do seem to be. 

The. This is the greatest error of all the rest. 
The man should be put into the lantern. How is it 
245 else the man i' the moon ? 

Dem. He dares not come there for the candle ; 
for, you see, it is already in snuff. 



126 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

Hip. I am aweary of this moon. Would he would 
change ! 

The. It appears, by his small light of discretion, 250 
that he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all 
reason, we must stay the time. 

Lys. Proceed, Moon. 

Moon. All that I have to say, is, to tell you that 
the lantern is the moon; I, the man 1 the moon; 255 
this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my 
dog. 

Dem. Why, all these should be in the lantern; 
for all these are in the moon. But, silence ! here 260 
comes Thisbe. 

Enter Thisbe. 

This. This is old Ninny's tomb. Where is my 
love ? 

Lion. [Roaring.] Oh [Thisbe runs off. 

Dem. Well roar'd, Lion. 
The. Well run, Thisbe. 

Hip. Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines 265 
with a good grace. 

[The Lion shakes Thisbe 1 s mantle, and exit.] 
The. Well mous'd, Lion. 
Dem. And then came Pyramus. 
Lys. And so the lion vanish'd. 

Enter Pyramus. 

Pyr. Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny 

beams ; 270 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 12 7 

I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright ; 
For, by thy gracious, golden glittering gleams, 
I trust to take of truest Thisby sight. 

But stay, O spite! 
275 But mark, poor knight, 

What dreadful dole is here! 
Eyes, do you see? 
How can it be? 
O dainty duck! O dear! 
28o Thy mantle good, 

What, stain'd with blood! 
Approach, ye Furies fell ! 
O Fates, come, come, 
Cut thread and thrum ; 
285 Quail, crush, conclude, and quell! 

The. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, 
would go near to make a man look sad. 

Hip. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man. 
Pyr. O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame? 
290 Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear ; 
Which is — no, no — which was the fairest dame 
That liv'd, that lov'd, that lik'd, that look'd with 
cheer. 

Come tears, confound ; 
Out, sword and wound 
295 The pap of Pyramus ; 

Ay, that left pap, 
Where heart doth hop. 

[Stabs himself.] 



128 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. 
Now am I dead, 

Now am I fled ; 300 

My soul is in the sky. 
Tongue, lose thy light; 
Moon, take thy flight. 

[Exit Moonshine] 
Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies.] 

Dem. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but 305 
one. 

Lys. Less than an ace, man, for he is dead ; he is 
nothing. 

The. With the help of a surgeon he might yet 
recover, and yet prove an ass. 310 

Hip. How chance Moonshine is gone before 
Thisbe comes back and finds her lover? 

Re-enter Thisbe. 

The. She will find him by starlight. Here she 
comes ; and her passion ends the play. 

Hip. Methinks she should not use a long one for 315 
such a Pyramus. I hope she will be brief. 

Dem. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyra- 
mus, which Thisbe, is the better; he for a man, God 
warrant us; she for a woman, God bless us. 

Lys. She hath spied him already with those sweet 320 
eyes. 

Dem. And thus she moans, videlicet: — 

This. Asleep, my love? 

What, dead, my dove? 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 129 

325 O Pyramus, arise! 

Speak, speak! Quite dumb? 
Dead, dead? A tomb 
Must cover thy sweet eyes. 
These lily lips, 
330 This cherry nose, 

These yellow cowslip cheeks, 
Are gone, are gone! 
Lovers, make moan. 
His eyes were green as leeks. 
335 O Sisters Three, 

Come, come to me, 
With hands as pale as milk; 
Lay them in gore, 
Since you have shore 
340 With shears his thread of silk. 

Tongue, not a word ! 
Come, trusty sword ; 
Come, blade, my breast imbrue ; 

[Stabs herself.] 
And, farewell, friends; 
345 Thus Thisby ends. 

Adieu, adieu, adieu. [Dies.] 

The. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the 
dead. 

Dem. Ay, and Wall too. 
350 [Bot. Starting up.] No, I assure yo u ; the wall 
is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you 
to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance 
between tw T o of our company? 



130 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

The. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play 
needs no excuse. Never excuse ; for when the players 355 
are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if 
he that writ it had played Pyramus and hang'd himself 
in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy; 
and so it is, truly; and very notably discharg'd. But - 
come, your Bergomask ; let your epilogue alone. 360 

[A dance.] 
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. 
Lovers, to bed ; 't is almost fairy time. 
I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn 
As much as we this night have overwatch'd. 
This palpable-gross play hath well beguil'd 365 

The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed. 
A fortnight hold we this solemnity 
In nightly revels and new jollity. [Exeunt. 

Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 

Robin. Now the hungry lion roars, 

And the wolf behowls the moon; 370 

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, 

All with weary task fordone. 
Now the wasted brands do glow, 

Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, 
Puts the wretch that lies in woe 375 

In remembrance of a shroud. 
Now it is the time of night 

That the graves, all gaping wide, 
Every one lets forth his sprite, 

In the church-way paths to glide. 380 



v. i. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 131 

And we fairies, that do run 
By the triple Hecate's team 

From the presence of the sun 

Following darkness like a dream, 
385 Now are frolic. Not a mouse 

Shall disturb this hallowed house. 

I am sent with broom before, 

To sweep the dust behind the door. 

Enter Oberon and Titania with their train. 

Obe. Through the house give glimmering light 
390 By the dead and drowsy fire, 

Every elf and fairy sprite 

Hop as light as bird from brier ; 

And this ditty, after me, 

Sing, and dance it trippingly. 
395 Tita. First, rehearse your song by rote, 

To each word a warbling note. 

Hand in hand, with fairy grace, 

Will we sing, and bless this place. 

[Song [and dance}. 
Obe. Now, until the break of day, 
400 Through this house each fairy stray. 

To the best bride-bed will we, 

Which by us shall blessed be ; 

And the issue there create 

Ever shall be fortunate. 
405 So shall all the couples three 

Ever true in loving be ; 

And the blots of Nature's hand 



132 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM v. i. 

Shall not in their issue stand ; 
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar. 
Nor mark prodigious, such as are 4io 

Despised in nativity. 
Shall upon their children be. 
With this field-dew consecrate, 
Every fairy take his gait. 

And each several chamber bless, 415 

Through this palace, with sweet peace; 
And the owner of it blest 
Ever shall in safety rest. 
Trip away ; make no stay ; 

Meet me all by break of day. 420 

[Exeunt \_Oberoji, Titania, and train]. 
Robin. If we shadows have offended, 

Think but this, and all is mended, 

That you have but slumb'red here 

While these visions did appear. 

And this weak and idle theme, 425 

No more yielding but a dream, 

Gentles, do not reprehend. 

If you pardon, we will mend. 

And, as I am an honest Puck, 

If we have unearned luck 430 

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, 

We will make amends ere long; 

Else the Puck a liar call. 

So, good night unto you all. 

Give me your hands, if we be friends, 435 

And Robin shall restore amends. [Exit.] 



NOTES 



ABBREVIATIONS 

A.— Arden Edition, by E. K. Chambers. (D. C. Heath & Co.) 
B. — Edition by G. P. Baker. (Longman's English Classics.) 
C. — Edition by Henry Cunningham. (Dowden Shakespeare.) 
G. — Globe Edition of Shakspere. References to other plays of 
Shakspere's than Midsummer - Night's Dream are according to the 
line numbering of this edition and that by W. A. Neilson in "The 
Cambridge Poets." 

R.— Edition by W. J. Rolfe. (American Book Co.) 
Var. — Variorum Edition, by H. H. Furness. 
Gr. — Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar. 
S. — Schmidt's Shakespeare-Lexicon. 



ACT I. 

I. i. In this scene, which is mainly exposition, the first nineteen 
lines afford a setting for the play by preparing for the central incident 
around which the other events group themselves, the wedding of 
Theseus and Hippolyta. The remainder of the scene indicates the 
nature of the complications that are to follow, by its rehearsal of the 
difficulties of the two pairs of lovers. Matters are brought rapidly 
to a head by the command of Theseus that Hermia must wed Demetrius 
or suffer the penalty for disobedience. The action is started by the 
determination of Hermia and Lysander to flee, and of Helena to inform 
Demetrius, which leads all four to the wood where the comedy of 
"errors" is played. 

I. i. 4. Lingers. Delays; used transitively. 

I. i. 5. Dowager. A widow who has during her lifetime a claim on 
part of the heir's estate, and who thus, during the period in which she 
is withering away, delays the heir from entering into full possession of 
his revenue. 

I. i. 11. Philostrate. Pronounced as a trisyllable, as are Theseus 
and Egeus through the play. 

I. i. 13. Pert. Lively. 

I. i. 15. Companion. Often used by Shakspere in the contempt- 
uous way that we sometimes use "fellow." 

133 



134 NOTES 

I. i. 20. Duke. Shakspere perhaps took this anachronistic title 
from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, which begins as follows: 
"Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, 
Ther was a duk that highte Theseus; 
Of Athenes he was lord and governour, 
And in his tyme swich a conquerour, 
That gretter was ther non under the sonne. 
Ful many a riche contre hadde he wonne; 
That with his wisdom and his chivalrie 
He conquered al the regne of Femynye, 
That whilom was i-cleped Cithea; 
And weddede the queen Ipolita, 
And brought hire hoom with him in his contr6 
With moche glorie and gret solempnite." 
This passage also explains the allusion in 11. 16-17. 
I. i. 27. For meter, cf. Introd., p. 39,2. For the charge of witchcraft 
cf. Othello, I. iii. 60 ff. 

I. i. 31. Faining. "Loving, longing, yearning; love-sick" (Var.) 
Many editors emend to feigning. 

I. i. 32. Stolen. . .fantasy. Stealthily impressed thyself on her fancy. 
I. i. 33. Gawds. Baubles, trifling ornaments. Conceits. Fanci- 
ful devices. 

I. i. 35. Prevailment. Influence. Unhard'ned. Impressionable, like 
soft wax. 

I. i. 36. Filch' d. Stolen. 
I. i. 45. Immediately. Especially, expressly. 

I. i. 54. In this kind. In this present respect of marriage. Voice. 
Approval. 

I. i. 68. Blood. Passion, impulse. 
I. i. 69. Whether. Cf. Introd., p. 39, 2. 
I. i. 71. Mew'd. Confined. 

I. i. 73. Moon. I. e. Diana, the moon-goddess. 
I. i. 74-5. For the significance of these lines as bearing on the 
presence of Queen Elizabeth at the performance of the play, cf. 
Introd., p. 38. 

I. i. 76. Earthlier happy. Happier on earth, or from a worldly 
point of view. 

I. i. 80. Virgin patent. My privilege as an unmarried woman. 
I. i. 81. Unwished yoke. For omission of preposition to see Introd., 
p. 44, 6, a. 

I. i. 89. Protest. Vow. 
I. i. 92. Crazed. Feeble, not valid. 
I. i. 98. Estate unto. Settle upon. 
I. i. 99. Deriv'd. Born, descended. 
I. i. 100. Well possess'd. Rich. 



I. 


i. 110. 


I. 


i. 118. 


I. 


i. 120. 


I. 


i. 125. 


I. 


i. 129. 


I. 


i. 130. 


I. 


i. 131. 


I. 


i. 135. 


I. i 


. 136. 



NOTES 135 

Spotted. Stained with guilt, unfaithful. 
Fancies. Love. 

Extenuate. Weaken, make lighter. 
Against. In preparation for. Cf. Introd., p. 44, 6, c. 
How chance? How does it chance that? 
Belike. Probably. 

Beteem them. Allow them, bestow upon them. 
Blood. Rank, birth. 

O cross I etc. What misfortune that one well-born should 
be slavishly in love with a person of lower rank! 
I. i. 137. Misgraffed. Badly grafted or united. 

I. i. 143. Momentany. "Momentary" is Shakspere's usual form, 
but this form is found occasionally in other writers of the period. 
I. i. 145. Collied. Blackened, as with coal. Cf. collier, colliery. 
I. i. 146. Spleen. Sudden impulse of emotion, flash of passion. 
I. i. 149, 151, 152. For pronunciation of confusion, edict, and patience, 
cf. Introd., p. 41. 

I. i. 152. Let us teach our trial patience. Let us teach ourselves 
patience in enduring our trial. 
I. i. 154. Due. Appropriate. 
I. i. 155. Fancy's. Love's. 

I. i. 158. Revenue. Accent on the second syllable. This pronun- 
ciation is still used in the British Parliament. 

I. i. 159. Leagues. A league was usually considered the equivalent 
of three miles. But cf. 1. 165 below, and I. ii. 98, where it is apparently 
regarded as a mile. 

I. i. 160. Respects. Regards. 

I. i. 164. Steal forth thy father's house. See Introd., p. 44, 6, a, for 
omission of from. 

I. i. 167. For an excellent description of English May-day observ- 
ances read Brandt's Popular Antiquities, vol. i, pp. 212-34. 

I. i. 170. Golden head. Cupid had two kinds of arrows, one tipped 
with gold, the other with lead. For their opposite effects cf. Golding's 
translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, I. 466 ff: 

"Therefrom his quiver full of shafts two arrows he did take 
Of sundry powers; tone causes Love, the tother doth it slake. 
That causeth love is all of golde, with point full sharpe and bright, 
That chaseth love is blunt, whose Steele with leaden head is dight." 
I. i. 171. Simplicity. Innocence. 

I. i. 172. This vague allusion is often explained as referring to the 
cestus or girdle of Venus, which aroused love for the wearer. But 
that may simply mean "all." 

I. i. 173-4. A reference to the desertion of Dido, queen of Carthage, 
by the Trojan Aeneas. See Virgil's Aeneid. 



136 NOTES 

I. i. 182. Fair. Fairness, beauty. Shakspere frequently uses the 
adjective for the substantive; cf. Comedy of Errors, II. i. 98: 
"My decayed fair 
A sunny look of his would soon repair." 

Also Venus and Adonis 1083, 1086, and cf. Introd., p. 42, 3, b. 

I. i. 183. Lode-stars. Guiding-stars; like the North Star, by which 
sailors guide their course. "Here Helena seems to mean, not only that 
Hermia's eyes are 'guiding stars, 'but also that they have the irresistible 
power of attraction which lode (cf. 'lode-stone') suggests." [B.] 

I. i. 185. Favour. Personal appearance. 

I. i. 190. Bated. Excepted. 

I. i. 191. Translated. Transformed. 

I. i. 209. Phoebe. Another name for Diana, the moon. 

I. i. 212. Still. Ever. 

I. i. 215. Faint. Pale. 

I. i. 219. Stranger companies. Strange companions. 

I. i. 231. So I . . . qualities. So do I err in admiring his qualities. 
See Introd., p. 44, 6, b. 

I. i. 232. Holding no quantity. "Bearing no proportion to what 
they are estimated at by love." [S.] 

I. i. 242. Eyne. The old plural form of eye; also written even. Cf. 
other plurals in -en like oxen, children. 

I. i. 249. Dear expense. It will be a very costly proceeding for me 
to earn thanks by telling my love where he may find my rival. 

I. ii. Scene two introduces the low-comedy of the play, and connects 
the actors in it with the main thread of the story through their purpose 
to entertain Theseus on his wedding day. It also promises to bring 
them into contact with the group of lovers, since Quince gives orders 
to meet in the same wood whither Lysander and Hermia propose to 
flee. The kind of humor furnished by Bottom's contorted vocabulary 
has been frequently used as a comic device by Shakspere and other 
English dramatists; perhaps the best known example of the type, 
outside of Shakspere, is Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's Rivals. Cf. Dog- 
berry in Much Ado about Nothing. 

I. ii. 2. You were best. It were best for you. You, which is really 
a dative, had, by Shakspere's time, come to be regarded as a nomina- 
tive; cf. " I were better," 2 Henry IV., I. ii. 245 ; " I were best not 
call," Cymbeline, III. vi. 19. Generally. Bottom's equivalent for 
"individually." 

I. ii. 3. Scrip. Script, written list. 

I. ii. 6. Interlude. This name, originally applied to the slight 
dramatic pieces played between courses of a banquet or as part of a 
long entertainment, came later to be used of any of the less dignified 
types of dramatic performance. 



NOTES 137 

I. ii. 10. Grow to a point. Come to the point, "get down to business," 
as we say. 

I. ii. 11. Marry. By (the Virgin) Mary, a common oath. The 
title pages of plays published in Shakspere's early days often bore 
such conflicting titles: e. g. A Lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of 
pleasant Mirth, containing The Life of Cambises, King of Percia; and 
A New Tragicall Comedie of A pi us and Virginia (1575). 
I. ii. 23. Gallant. See Introd., p. 43, 5, b. 

I. ii. 27. Condole. Lament. Cf. Henry V., II. i. 133, where Pistol 
says, "Let us condole the Knight." 
I. ii. 28. Humour. Taste. 

I. ii. 29. Ercles. The part of Hercules, like that of Herod, gave the 
actor who played it opportunity to indulge in much violent action, and 
deliver himself of a great deal of rant and bombast. Thus in Greene's 
Groatsworth of Wit (1592) a player says, "The twelve labours of Hercules 
have I terribly thundered on the stage." The theatrical manager 
Henslowe records in his diary the performance in May, 1595, of the 
two parts of a play of Hercules, and these may be identical with Thomas 
Heywood's Silver Age and Brazen Age (pub. 1613), in which Hercules 
plays a prominent and very rhetorical part. 

I. ii. 30. A part to tear a cat in. It has been suggested that this may 
be intended as a burlesque on the killing of a lion by Hercules, but 
it was a proverbial expression; cf. Day's Isle of Gulls (1606), "I had 
rather hear two such jests, than a whole play of such Tear-cat thunder- 
claps;" Histriomastix (1610), "Sirrah, this is you would rend and tear 
the cat Upon a stage;" The Roaring Girl (1611), "I am called, by 
those who have seen my valour, Tear-cat." 

To make all splH. A common phrase, originally nautical, used of 
persons accustomed to "tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split 
the ears of the groundlings," {Hamlet, III. ii. 10 ff.). Rolfe suggests 
that the lines following may be a burlesque on the opening lines of 
Hercules Furens, translated from the Latin of Seneca, in 1581, and 
quotes: 

"O Lorde of Ghostes! whose fyrye flashe 
That forth thy hande doth shake, 
Doth cause the trembling lodges twayne, 

Of Phoebus' carre to shake. 
Raygne reachlesse nowe; in every place 

Thy peace procurde I have, 
Aloffe where Nereus lookes up lande, 
Empalde in winding wave." 
Also 

"The roring rocks have quaking sturd, 
And none therat hath pusht; 
Hell gloummy gates I have brast oape, 

Where grisly ghosts all husht 
Have stood ..." 



138 NOTES 

I. ii. 49. Play it in a mask. See Introd., p. 26, on the Elizabethan 
theatre. If there were not boys enough to fill all the feminine roles 
the adults who played the parts performed in masks. 

I. ii. 51. An. If. 

I. ii. 52. Thisne. "It may be questioned whether the true reading 
is nat thisne, thisne; that is, 'in this manner,' a meaning which 'thissen' 
has in several dialects." [Cambridge Ed.] Most critics have considered 
this Bottom's attempt to pronounce the lady's name in a "monstrous 
little voice." 

I. ii. 70. That. So that, as often. 

I. ii. 80. Aggravate. Mrs, Quickly makes the same mistake of 
using this word when she means precisely the opposite in 2 Henry IV .. 
II. iv. 175, "I beseek you now, aggravate your choler." 

I. ii. 81. You. Ethical dative; see Introd., p. 42, 2, c. 

I. ii. 82. An 'twere. As if it were. 

I. ii. 84. Proper. Handsome. 

I. ii. 90. To dye the beard was a custom of Shakspere's time. 

I. ii. 91. Purple-in-grain. Some shade of red; Judas in the old 
Mystery plays wore a red beard. 

I. ii. 92. French-crown-colour. The color of the French coin called 
a crown, i. e. pale yellow. Quince, in replying, puns on the other mean- 
ing of crown = head. 

I. ii. 105. Obscenely. Perhaps Bottom means "obscurely"; another 
suggestion is "seemly"; yet another, "unseen." 

I. ii. 108. Hold or cut bow-strings. A doubtful phrase, the general 
meaning of which seems to be "whatever happens." Bottom echoes 
Quince : " Yes, let us meet at the Duke's oak no matter what may 
come up." 



ACT II. 

II. i. We have hitherto met two of the groups of characters con- 
cerned in the action of the play; the third group, from whose interfer- 
ence in the affairs of the mortals most of the complications arise, now 
make their appearance. The fairy kingdom is not essentially unlike 
realms more mundane, and of the internal dissensions that disturb it 
we learn in the first part of the scene, while in the last part Oberon 
proposes to punish his rebellious queen and to restore peace among 
the lovers by means of his magic plant. The scene is remarkable for 
the large amount of very beautiful descriptive poetry, which advances 
the action scarcely at all, but is highly acceptable for its own sake. 

II. i. S. D. The one door and another of the stage direction refer, of 
course, to actual stage arrangements, rather than to the imaginary 
"wood near Athens." 



NOTES 139 

II. i. 2. C. quotes Coleridge on the meter used by the fairy as 
"invented and employed by Shakespeare for the sake of its appropri- 
ateness to the rapid and airy motion of the fairy by whom the speech 
is delivered." 

II. i. 7. Sphere. According to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, 
still in vogue when Shakspere wrote, the moon and all the other heavenly 
bodies were fixed in concentric hollow crystalline spheres that rotated 
around the earth, which was supposed to be fixed at the center of this 
series of spheres. Hence the motion of sun, moon, planets and 
fixed stars was due to the rotation of the spheres in which they were 
embedded. This motion was also responsible for the "music of the 
spheres" of which Lorenzo speaks in Merchant of Venice, V. i. 60-2: 
"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins." 
1 1 . i. 9. Orbs. T he rings of darker grass sometimes seen in a pasture, 
called "fairy rings," and believed by the peasantry to be made by 
the feet of dancing fairies. 

II. i..l0. Tall. That the cowslips are tall to the fairies shows how 
small the fairies are. Yet they must have been represented on the 
stage by children. Pensioners. Queen Elizabeth kept a bodyguard 
called the Gentlemen Pensioners, made up of fifty tall and handsome 
young men of good birth, who were gorgeously attired. 
II. i. 11. Spots. Cf. Cymbeline, II. ii. 38: 

"A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops 
I' the bottom of a cowslip." 
II. i. 16. Lob. Clown, lout; the word is allied to "lubber," and has 
a suggestion of awkwardness. 

II. i. 20. Wrath. See Introd., p. 42, 1, b. 

II. i. 23. Changeling. The fairies were supposed to steal beautiful 
children and leave in exchange ugly elves; here, however, the word is 
applied to a child thus carried away. 
Trace. Roam. 
Sheen. Shining, bright. 
Square. Quarrel. 
Shrewd. Mischievous, wicked. 

Robin Goodfellow. The class of household spirits repre- 
sented by Robin Goodfellow is, of course, quite distinct from dainty 
beings like Titania's elves. 

II. i. 35. .Villager y. Village folk, peasantry. 

II. i. 36. Skim. The change of construction from the third person 
singular of "frights" is caused by a change of thought from the gram- 
matical antecedent "he" to the logical antecedent "you." Quern. A 
hand-mill for grinding corn. 

II. i. 38. Barm. Properly yeast, but here used rather of the froth 



II. i 


. 25. 


II. 


i. 29. 


II. i 


i. 30. 


II. 


i. 33. 


II. 


i. 34. 



140 NOTES 

from which the yeast was made. The drink failed to ferment properly, 
to come to a head and show froth. 

II. i. 39. Mislead . . . harm. I. e. the will-o'-the-wisp. 

II. i. 40. Puck. Not strictly a proper name, but the name of a 
class of spirits, a synonym for devil or fiend; cf. V. i. 429. 

II. i. 48. Crab. Crab-apple; these were roasted in the fire and 
formed one of the ingredients of a hot, spiced drink. 

II. i. 51. Aunt. Used generically for "old woman." Saddest. 
Soberest, most serious. 

II. i. 54. "Tailor" cries. The best explanation of the epithet is 
that offered by Halliwell, who says it is equivalent to "thief," and 
quotes from Pasjuil's Night-Cap (1612) : 

"Theeving is now an occupation made, 
Though men the name of tailor doe it give." 

II. i. 55. Quire. Choir, company. 

II. i. 56. Waxen. Wax, increase. Neeze. Sneeze. 

II. i. 66, 68. Cor in, Phillida. Conventional names in pastoral 
poetry for a shepherd and shepherdess. 

II. i. 67. Corn. Shepherds' pipes were made of oaten straw. 

II. i. 70. Bouncing. The word has a scornful signification coming 
from the lips of dainty Titania. 

II. i. 71. Buskin'd. The buskin was the Latin cothurnus, a high 
boot used by warriors, hunters, and tragic actors. 

II. i. 75. Glance at. Hint at, indirectly attack. 

II. i. 78-80. Perigenia, Aegle, Ariadne, Antiopa. Shakspere took 
these names of the loves of Theseus from North's translation of Plu- 
tarch's Life of Theseus. 

I. i. 82. Middle summer's spring. The beginning of midsummer. 
Paved. With pebbly bottom. 
Margent. A poetical form of margin. 
Ringlets. Fairy rings, like the orbs of 1. 9. 

.17. For an account of the attempts to date the play from 
this passage see Introd., p. 33. 

II. i. 90. Contagious. Fogs were popularly supposed to carry 
infection and pestilence. 

II. i. 92. Overborne their continents. Overflowed their banks. 

II. i. 95. His. Its. See Introd., p. 42, 2, a. 

II. i. 97. Murrain. Plague-stricken. 

II. i. 98. Nine men's morris. A game somewhat resembling 
draughts, sometimes played on the turf by rustics. 

II. i. 99. Quaint mazes. Labyrinths marked out on the grass, and 
kept trodden down by the boys at their sports. There was long such 
a maze near Winchester School. Wanton. Playful; a case of metonymy, 
for the adjective is transferred from the playing boys to the place where 
they carry on their sport. 



II. : 


i. 84. 


II. 


i. 85. 


II. : 


i. 86. 


II. 


i. 88- 



II. 


i. 10< 


II. : 


i. 112. 


II. 


i. 113. 


II. : 


i. 114. 


II. : 


i. 117. 


II. i 


i. 121. 


II. i 


i. 146. 



NOTES 141 

II. i. 104. Washes. Wets, makes damp. 

II. i. 105. Rheumatic diseases. These included colds, catarrhs, 
etc., in addition to what we now call rheumatism. 

II. i. 105. Distemperature. Disturbance of the natural order of 
things. It has been taken, however, as referring to the quarrel between 
Oberon and Titania. 

Hiems. Winter. Thin. Thinly covered. 
Childing. Fruitful. Cf. Sonnet 97: 
"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase." 
Wonted. Accustomed. 

Increase. The products natural to each season. 
Original. Source. 
Henchman. Here, page. 

Thou shalt not from this grove. For omission of verb of 
motion see Introd., p. 43, 4, c. 

II. i. 158. By. Practically equivalent to "in." Cf. Gr. 145. 
II. i. 164. Fancy-free. Untouched by love. 

II. i. 163. Love-in-idleness. A name sometimes applied to the 
pansy. 

II. i. 148-169. These linc-o constitute one of the most discussed 
passages in Shakspere, owing to the fact that the dramatist has been 
' suspected of allegorical intent. It has been universally agreed from 
the time of Shakspere's first editor, Rowe, that the poet here pays a 
courtly compliment to the Queen. "The fair vestal throned by the 
west" is undoubtedly Elizabeth, queen of England, an island of the 
west. Cupid's unsuccessful attempt on the heart of the imperial 
votaress is, of course, an allusion to the Queen's unmarried condition 
and oft-proclaimed regard for chastity. Warburton tried to show that 
by the mermaid was figured Mary, Queen of Scot.\. The most elaborate 
theorizing, however, was done by the Rev. N. J. Halpin (Oberon' s 
Vision. Shaks. Soc. Publ. 1843), who argued that the passage is to 
a certain extent descriptive of the entertainment given by the Earl of 
Leicester for the Queen at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, that Cupid was 
Leicester, and the little Western flower was Lettice, Countess of Essex, 
with whom Leicester was then intriguing and whom he afterward 
married. Halpin's view has failed of general acceptance, for it seems 
clear that the little western flower is a. real flower, and that the passage 
was written mainly to emphasize its importance and to prepare for the 
prominent part it plays. For a full discussion of the arguments pro 
and con see Var. For the bearing of the allusion to Elizabeth on the 
occasion of the play, see Introd., p. 38. 

II. i. 176. Forty. Generally used in Shakspere's time to indicate 
an indefinite number; cf. our expression "forty winks." 

II. i. 185. I am invisible. Oberon adds this for the benefit of the 
audience to explain why he remains unnoticed by the mortals. Hens- 



142 NOTES 

lowe, in his diary, lists among his properties "a robe for to go invisibell," 
and perhaps Oberon wore some such distinctive attire to indicate his 
invisibility. 

II. i. 190. Stay . . . stayeth. "I will arrest Lysander, and 
disappoint his scheme of carrying off Hermia; for 'tis upon the account 
of this latter that I am wasting away the night in this wood." [Heath, 
quot. by Var.] Some editors read "slay . . . slayeth." 

II. i. 192. Wood within Miis wood. The first word of the pun is the 
Anglo-Saxon "wod," meaning mad, or furiously angry. 

II. i. 195. Adamant. Used with some confusion both for the dia- 
mond, or other substance of extreme hardness, and for the lodestone 
or magnet. 

II. i. 196. But yet . . . as steel. Many editors emend for to 
though. Furness explains by making draw not = repel. Perhaps 
the passage may be paraphrased thus: "Yet you draw not iron, for 
my heart has only the trueness of steel, not its hardness." 

II. i. 201. Nor I cannot. For double negative see Introd., p. 43, 5, a. 
Worser. For double comparative see Introd., p. 42, 3, a. 
Impeach. Expose to reproach. 
Privilege. Protection. For that. Since, because. 
Respect. Opinion, estimation. 

The story of Apollo's pursuit of Daphne and her trans- 
formation into a laurel tree is told by Ovid in the first book of the 
Metamorphoses. 

II. i. 232. Griffin. A fabulous animal with the body of a lion and 
head of an eagle. Hind. Female deer. 

II. i. 240. Your wrongs. The wrongs you do me. 

II. i. 244. See Introd., p. 43, 4, f., for grammatical construction. 

II. i. 250. Oxlips. A kind of cowslips. 

II. i. 251. Woodbine. Usually, honeysuckle, but used of other 
climbing shrubs. 

II. i. 252. Eglantine. Sweet-briar. 

II. i. 255. Throws. Casts off. 

II. i. 256. Weed. Garment. Cf. "widow's weeds." 

II. ii. With the dropping of the juice in the eyes of Titania and 
Lysander and the startlingly sudden abandonment by the latter of 
Hermia for Helena, the complication is fairly under way. The spec- 
tacular element prevails in the first part of the scene. 

II. ii. 1. Roundel. The same as round, II. i. 140. 

II. ii. 2. Third part of a minute. Note the ingenious way in which 
Shakspere calls attention to the diminutiveness of the fairies by pro- 
portioning their conceptions of time to their size. 

II. ii. 3. Cankers. Canker-worms. 

II. ii. 4. Rere-mice. Bats. 

II. ii. 7. Quaint. Fine, dainty. 



II. 


i. 208. 


II. 


i. 214. 


II. 


i. 220. 


II. 


i. 224. 


II. i 


i. 231. 



NOTES 143 



II. ii. 8. Offices. Duties. 

II. ii. 9. Double. Forked. 

II. ii. 11. Newts and blind-worms. These harmless creatures were 
formerly considered poisonous. 

II. ii. 13. Philomel. The nightingale; the story of Philomela is 
told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. vi. 

II. ii. 30. Ounce. A kind of panther. Cat. Wild-cat. 

II. ii. 31. Pard. Leopard. 

II. ii. 36. Troth. Truth; in 11. 42 and 50 below it means pledge of 
love. 

II. ii. 45. Take the sense . . . of my innocence. "Understand my 
innocent meaning." [Johnson.] 

II. ii. 46. Love . . . conference. When lovers talk together 
their love enables each to get the other's true meaning. 

II. ii. 54. Beshrew. A playful curse. 

II. ii. 68. Approve. Prove, test. 

II. ii. 79. Owe. Own, possess. 

II. ii. 86. Darkling. In the dark. Cf. King Lear, I. iv. 237: "So 
out went the candle, and we were left darkling." 

II. ii. 88. Fond. Foolish. 

II. ii. 89. Lesser. Cf. worser, II. i. 208. 

II. ii. 99. Sphery. Star-like. For eyne, cf. I. i. 242, note. 

II. ii. 103. The surprising suddenness of Lysander's declaration of 
love for Helena is accentuated by the rhyme, the way in which he caps 
the couplet begun by her. 

II. ii. 118. Ripe. A verb. 

II. ii. 119. Touching . . . skill. Reaching the highest point 
of human discernment. 

II. ii. 121. O'erlook. Look over, peruse. 

II. ii. 132. Gentleness. Nobility, courtesy. 

II. ii. 149. Eat. A past tense, a parallel form with ate. 

II. ii. 154. Of all loves. For love's sake; the of of adjuration. 



ACT III. 

III. i. The last scene of Act II. brought the fairies into contact 
with the group of lovers; here, with the transformation of Bottom and 
the affection lavished on him by the enamoured queen, the fairies are 
entangled with the group of artisans. The contrast between asinine 
Bottom and delicate Titania is in the most exquisite spirit of comedy. 

III. i. 2. Pat, pat. Exactly, at the time and place agreed upon. 

III. i. 4. Tiring-house. Dressing room, at-tiring room. 

III. i. 8. Bully. "A term of endearment and familiarity, originally 
applied to either sex; sweetheart, darling. Later, to men only, imply- 



144 NOTES 

ing friendly admiration; good friend, fine feHovv, 'gallant.' " [New Eng. 
Diet.] Cf. Henry V., IV. i. 48, "I love the lovely bully"; Merry Wires, 
II. iii. 18, "bully doctor." 

III. i. 13. By'r lakin. By our lady-kin, or little lady; like "marry,'' 
an oath by the Virgin. Parlous. A corruption of "perilous,'' ften 
used merely as an intensive. 

III. i. 20. More better. For the double comparative, cf. Introd., 
p. 42, 3, a. 

III. i. 24. In eight and six. I. e. in lines of eight and six syllables 
alternately. 

III. i. 32. Your. Not used possessively, but in a colloquial way 
like the Latin iste; that lion you know about. Cf. I. ii. 90, "your straw- 
colour beard, etc." 

III. i. 42. Pity of my life. A sad thing for me. 

III. i. 45. Tell them plainly. Malone suggested that a hint for 
this might have come from one of the anecdotes in a collection of jests 
(Mss. Harl. 6395) : "There was a spectacle presented to Queen Elizabeth 
on the water, and among others, Harry Goldingham was to represent 
Arion upon the dolphin's back; but finding his voice to be very hoarse 
and unpleasant, when he came to perform it, he tears off his disguise 
and swears he was none of Arion, not he, but e'en honest Harry Gold- 
ingham, which blunt discovery pleased the Queen better than if it had 
gone through in the right way; yet he could order his voice to an instru- 
ment exceedingly well." Cf. Scott's use of this incident in Kenilworth. 

III. i. 56. Great chamber -window, where we play. I. e. the window 
of the great hall of Theseus's palace. It was a very common thing for 
the theatrical companies of Shakspere's time to give performances in 
the homes of noblemen, using the great main hall for the purpose. 

III. i. 58. Bush of thorns. "The man in the moon was popularly 
represented with a bundle of thorns and a dog. He was variously 
explained as being either Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice, 
or Cain sacrificing thorns as the produce of his land, or the man in 
Numbers, xv. 32, who was stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath- 
day." [C] 

III. i. 79. Toward. Preparing. 

III. i. 94. Brisky juvenal. Brisk youth; the affected vocabulary 
of the old plays is effectively burlesqued in this bit of the proposed play- 
as rehearsed, which, it will be noted, differs from that finally presented. 
Eke. Also. 

III. i. 102. /// were. I. e. if I were as true as truest horse. 

III. i. 105. Lead you about around. Cf. our expression, "to lead one 
a dance." 

III. i. 110. Each of the substantives refers back to the verb in the 
corresponding position in the preceding line. 

III. i. 115. An ass-head of your own. "Do you see a reflection of 



III. i 


:. us. 


III. i 


i. 124. 


III. : 


i. 126. 


III. 


i. 127. 


III. 


i. 130. 



NOTES 145 

your own noddle?" [B.] Bottom is here, as later, perfectly unconscious 
of his transformation; hence, his constant use of the word "ass" has 
high comic irony. 

Translated. Cf. I. i. 191. 
Ousel cock. Male blackbird. 
Throstle. Thrush. 
Quill. Singing voice. 

Plain-song. The simple melody in any musical com- 
position, without variations. The word here probably refers to the 
rather monotonous note of the cuckoo. 

III. i. 131-2. The name of the bird suggested cuckold, the word 
applied by the Elizabethans to a man whose wife was unfaithful, and 
the bird's note was supposed to convey a warning. Cf. Love's Labour's 
Lost, V. ii. 908 ff : 

"The cuckoo then on every tree 
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, 

'Cuckoo; 
Cuckoo, cuckoo,' — O word of fear 
Unpleasing to a married ear!" 

Force perforce. A strong way of saying "necessarily." 
Gleek. Scoff. 

Whether. Monosyllabic. Cf. Introd., p. 39, 2. 
Apricocks. An earlier and more correct spelling. 
Eyes. By poetic license the phosphorescent glow is 
transferred from the insect's tail to its eyes. 
III. i. 169. Have. Attend. 
III. i. 177. Cry your mercy. Beg your pardon. 

III. i. 181. If . . . you. Cobweb was often used to stop the 
flow of blood from an injury. 

III. i. 184. Squash. An unripe peascod. 

III. i. 191. Ox-beef. Alluding to the use of mustard with beef. 
III. i. 197. Watery eye. Dew was supposed to fall from the moon. 
III. i. 199. Enforced. Violated. 

III. ii. This scene sees the complications in the story of the lovers 
at their height, while with the squeezing of the juice into Lysandei's 
eyes comes the first step in the solution. It is to be noted that there is 
but little distinctive characterization of the lovers; Helena and Hermia, 
Demetrius and Lysander are almost identical. 
III. ii. 3. In extremity. Excessively. 

III. ii. 5. Night-rule. Sometimes glossed as "night-revel," but 
apparently meaning no more than conduct, order of things, during the 
night. 

III. ii. 7. Close. Secret. 

III. ii. 9. Patches. Clowns, rustics. Mechanicals. Mechanics, 
artisans. 



III. 


i. 139. 


III. : 


i. 145. 


III. i 


!. 151. 


III. 


i. 164. 


III. 


i. 168. 



146 NOTES 

III. ii. 10. Stalls. Open shops, like those in a public market. 
III. ii. 13. Barren sort. Witless crew. 
III. ii. 17. Nole. Noddle, head. 
III. ii. 18. Anon. Immediately. 

III. ii. 21. Russet-pated choughs. Grey-headed jackdaws. Sort. 
Company. 

III. ii. 36. Latch'd. Caught, ensnared, charmed. 

III. ii. 44. Breath. Speech. 

III. ii. 48. Cf. Macbeth, III. iv. 136: 

"I am in blood 
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er." 
III. ii. 55. Her brother's. Apollo, the sun god, and Diana, the moon 
goddess, were brother and sister. 
III. ii. 70. Touch. Feat. 

III. ii. 74. On a mispris'd mood. In mistaken temper. 
III. ii. 84-87. Sleep is in debt to sorrow, for it is in duty bound to 
come and give sorrow relief. But sleep is bankrupt, and its failure to 
relieve sorrow makes sorrow's burden heavier. However, if I wait a 
bit for sleep to make an offer, it may pay some portion of the debt. 
Misprision. Mistake. 
Holding troth. Keeping faith. 
Confounding. Breaking. 
Fancy-sick. Love-sick. Cf. I. i. 155. 
With sighs . . . dear. It was an old superstition 
sigh a drop of blood was lost. 
Against. In anticipation of the time when she will 

Hit . . . archery. Cf. II. i. 165 ff. 

Fee. Reward, privilege. 

Fond pageant. Silly spectacle. 

Alone. Unequalled. 

So born. Being so born; an absolute construction, for 
376, 377, 417. For alternate rhyme, cf. Introd., p. 38. 

Advance. Show. 

Tales. Empty stories. 

Super praise my parts. Overpraise my qualities. 

Trim. Fine. 

Sort. Quality, kind. 

Aby. Pay for. 

Oes and eyes. A punning allusion to the stars. 

Artificial gods. Artist-gods. 

Two of the first. A term of heraldry, explained by 
Douce as referring to "the double coats in heraldry that belong to man 
and wife as one person, but which have but one crest." 



III. 


ii. 


90. 


III. 


ii. 


92. 


III. 


ii. 


93. 


III. 


ii. 


96. 


III. 


ii. 


97. 


that for every 


III. 

appea 


ii. 
r. 


99. 


III. 


ii. 


103. 


III. 


ii. 


113. 


III. 


ii. 


114. 


III. 


ii. 


119. 


III. 


ii. 


124. 


which 


see Gr. 


III. 


ii. 


128. 


III. 


ii. 


133. 


III. 


ii. 


153. 


III. 


ii. 


157. 


III. 


ii. 


159. 


III. 


ii. 


175. 


III. 


ii. 


188. 


III. 


ii. 


203. 


III. 


ii 


. 213. 



NOTES 147 

III. ii. 214. Due. Belonging. 

III. ii. 237. Persever. The regular Shaksperian spelling and accent. 
III. ii. 242. Argument. Subject for sport. 

III. ii. 257. Ethiope. Alluding, like tawny Tartar in 1. 263, to 
Hermia's brunette complexion. The reply of Demetrius, which, 
owing to differences in reading between the Folio and Quartos, has 
given rise to much discussion, is practically equivalent to a charge of 
cowardice on Lysander's part. He implies that Lysander's delay in 
answering his challenge, really occasioned by the way in which Hermia 
is clinging to Lysander, is assumed as an excuse for not fighting. 
III. ii. 259. Tame. Cowardly. 

III. ii. 268. Weak bond. I. e. Hermia's arms. There is, of course, 
a pun on the two senses of bond. 

III. ii. 282. Canker-blossom. Usually a wild rose, but here a canker- 
worm that eats blossoms. 
III. ii. 288. Puppet. Doll. 

III. ii. 296. Painted maypole. Maypoles, in addition to being 
adorned with streamers and flowers, were sometimes painted. Painted 
probably refers to Helena's blonde complexion. 
III. ii. 300. Curst. Shrewish, spiteful. 
III. ii. 302. Right. True. For. As regards. 
III. ii. 310. Stealth. Stealthy flight. 
III. ii. 317. Fond. Foolish. 
III. ii. 323. Shrewd. Same as curst, 1. 300. 

III. ii. 329. Minimus. The Latin superlative, substituted for the 
English "minim." Knot-grass. A weed which was popularly supposed 
to stunt the growth of children. 
III. ii. 335. Aby. Cf. 1. 175. 

Jowl. Jaw. Cheek by jowl. Close alongside. 
Coil. Strife. 'Long of you. On your account. 
Still. Always. 
Welkin. Heavens. 
Acheron. A river in hell. 

Virtuous property. Powerful and efficacious quality. 
His. See Introd., p. 42, 2, a. 
Fruitless. Without results, consequences. 
Date. Duration. 

Aurora's harbinger. The morning-star, which announces 
the approach of dawn. A harbinger was a person who rode in 
advance to procure lodgings. 

III. ii. 383. Crossways and floods. "Suicides, whose bodies were 
either never recovered from the water, or else buried i:i crossways 
without religious rites, were looked upon as especially doomed to wan- 
der." [A.] 

III. ii. 389. Morning's love. This is probably Aurora herself, but 



III. 


ii. 


338. 


III. 


ii. 


339. 


III. 


ii. 


345. 


III. 


ii. 


356. 


III. 


ii. 


357. 


III. 


ii. 


367. 


III. 


ii. 


368. 


III. 


ii. 


371. 


III. 


ii. 


373. 


III. 


ii. 


380. 



148 NOTES 

is sometimes taken as referring to her husband Tithonus or her lover 
Cephalus. 

III. ii. 402. Drawn. With drawn sword. 

III. ii. 412. We'll try no manhood here. We will not make trial of 
our courage, i. e. fight, here. 

III. ii. 421. Ho, ho, ho\ The devil in the old miracle and morality 
plays usually came on the stage with this laugh, and it was used by 
Robin Goodfellow in the anecdotes and ballads that described his 
pranks. 

III. ii. 461. Jack shall have Jill. In John Heywood's Epigrams, 
1557, is found "All shall be well, Jack shall have Jill," and the two 
names were frequently used generically. 

III. ii. 463. The man . . . well. Another old proverb. 

ACT IV. 

IV. i. Two of the three groups of actors, the lovers and the fairies, 
are here freed from the difficulties in which they have been entangled. 
The opening situation between Titania and Bottom is a continuation 
of that in III. i. With 1. 107 the scene reverts to III. ii. 

IV. i. 2. Amiable. Lovely. Coy. Caress. 
Overflown. Overflowed, drenched. 
Neaf. Fist. 

Leave your courtesy. Don't bother about ceremony. 
Cavalery Cobweb. Bottom's pronunciation of Cavalero. 
Cobweb has already been assigned another task, and the name ought 
properly to be Peaseblossom. Either it is a slip on Shakspere's part, 
or else Bottom is temporarily confused as to his attendant's names. 

IV. i. 29. The tongs and the bones. The former were struck by an 
iron key, giving an effect like that of the modern triangle; the hitter 
resembled those used by present day negro minstrels. 

IV. i. 33. Bottle. "The diminutive of the French botte. a bundk-, of 
hay, flax, etc." [C] 

IV. i. 35. Hoard is dissyllabic. Cf. Introd., p. 41. 

IV. i. 38. Exposition. I. e. disposition. 

IV. i. 41. Woodbine . . . honeysuckle. A good deal of diffi- 
culty has been caused by the fact that these two words, here apparently- 
used to distinguish two different plants, are elsewhere used by Shakspere 
as synonymous. Probably in this instance, however, "woodbine" may 
be taken as = convolvulus. Cf. II. i. 251. 

IV. i. 42. Female. Because the ivy is dependent upon the elm as a 
wife on her husband. 

IV. i. 46. Dotage. Doting affection. 

IV. i. 48. Favours. Love-tokens, presents. 

IV. i. 53. Orient. Bright, rich. 



IV. i 


. 16. 


IV. i 


i. 19. 


IV. 


i. 20. 


IV. 


i. 22. 



NOTES 149 



IV. i. 65. Other. A plural. 

IV. i. 72. Dian's bud. The herb of II. i. 184 and III. ii. 366 ; as 
Cupid's flower is the "love-in-idleness" of II. i. 168. 

IV. i. 82. S. D. Music, still. Soft music. 

IV. i. 94. Sad. Grave, cf. II. i. 51. 

IV. i. 103. Observation. Ceremony, "observance to a morn of May," 
I. i. 167. 

IV. i. 104. V award. First part; literally, the vanguard of an army. 

IV. i. 106. Uncouple. Unleash ; hounds were leashed in couples. 

IV. i. 113. Hounds of Sparta. Celebrated for their swiftness and 
keenness of scent. 

IV. i. 114.' Chiding. Any loud sound; here specifically, baying. 

IV. i. 124. Flew'd. With large hanging chaps. Sanded. Sandy 
in color. 

IV. i. 123. Each under each. Of different notes, like bells in a 
chime. Very great care was paid in Elizabethan times to the musical 
quality of a pack's cry. Cf. Addison's description of Sir Roger's pack 
in the De Coverley Papers. 

IV. i. 133. Grace. Honor. 

IV. i. 138. Saint Valentine. It was supposed that birds began to 
mate on this day. 

IV. i. 144. To. As to. 

IV. i. 152. Lysander is interrupted by Egeus before finishing what 
he was saying. 

Cf. III. ii. 310, note. 
Cf. I. i. 155. 
Cf. I. i. 33. 

Power. 
>ewel. The usual interpretation is that Helena 
compares her recovery of Demetrius to a person's finding a jewel and 
remaining in uncertainty whether it is to be a permanent possession or 
whether it will be claimed by the owner. 

IV. i. 199. Bottom's train of thought is taken up precisely where it 
left off at III. i. 86, when he made his exit as Pyramus before returning 
with the ass's head upon his shoulders, but he thinks that he has been 
napping and indulging in most remarkable dreams. 

IV. i. 202. God's my life. "Shortened form of the oath, 'By God 
who is my life,' or, 'As God is my life.' " [B.] 

IV. i. 205. Go about. Undertake. 

IV. i. 208. Patch'd. The Elizabethan fool or jester was dressed in 
motley garments, made up of patches of various colors. 

IV. i. 209-13. The eye . . . dream was. Doubtless a parody of 
J. Corinthians, ii. 9: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love him." 



'. i. 159. 


Stealth. 


'. i. 162. 


Fancy. 


'. i. 166. 


Gaud. 


'. i. 168. 


Virtue. 


'. i. 190. 


Like a 



150 NOTES 



IV. i. 217. Gracious. Acceptable. At her death. The pronoun 
seems to refer to Thisbe. By many editors the passage is emended to 
read "after death," i. e. after Bottom's death as Pyramus, he will come 
to life again to sing the ballad of his dream. 



IV. ii. With the reunion of Bottom and the other artisans and their 
assurance that they are to present their play, the last group of characters 
are freed from their difficulties, and the plot is practically finished. 

IV. ii. 4. Transported. Transformed. Starveling's equivalent for 
the translated of Quince, III. i. 118, and of Puck, III. ii. 32. 

IV. ii. 6. Goes not forward. Will not proceed. 

IV. ii. 8. Discharge. Act. 

IV. ii. 14. A thing of naught. A loose woman. 

IV. ii. 20. Sixpence a day. Thomas Preston had the good fortune 
to please Queen Elizabeth by his acting in a play in 1564, and was given 
a pension of twenty pounds a year, at the rate of rather more than a 
shilling per day. 

IV. ii. 27. Courageous. Used with no particular meaning, but 
simply for the effect of its length. 

IV. ii. 33. Of. From. 

IV. ii. 35. Strings. With which to tie on the false beards. 

IV. ii. 38. Preferr'd. Proffered, offered for approval. It has been 
admitted to the list of entertainments from which Theseus is to choose. 



ACT V. 

V. i. The real story of the play is now over, and the last act merely 
provides a comic ending, somewhat in the nature of an epilogue, and 
closes with the epithalamium, or marriage song, which probably had 
additional point from the occasion of the play. Cf. Introd., p. 38. 

V. i. 5. Shaping fantasies. Creative imaginations. 

V. i. 8. Compact. Composed. 

V. i. 11. Brow of Egypt. I. e. a swarthy complexion. 

V. i. 19-20. That, if . . . joy. That if it merely conceives the 
idea of some pleasurable object, it immediately conceives some method 
of attaining that object. 

V. i. 21. Fear. Fearful object. 

V. i. 26. Constancy. Consistency. 

V. i. 34. After-supper. Sometimes called "rere-supper;" there is 
difference of opinion whether it means a second supper, served some 



NOTES 151 

r 

time later than the regular meal, or merely the dessert or last course of 
a supper. Here the latter meaning would seem preferable. 

V. i. 35. Manager of mirth. All court entertainments were in 
charge of a Master of the Revels, who was a personage of considerable 
importance. 

V. i. 39. Abridgement. Something to make time seem shorter, a 
pastime. 

V. i. 42. Brief. List. Ripe. Ready. 

V. i. 44. Battle with the Centaurs. Between the Centaurs and 
Lapithae. Cf. Ovid, Met. XII. 

V. i. 49. Thracian singer. Orpheus. Cf. Ovid, Met. XI. 

V. i. 52. The thrice three Muses. The attempts to find an allusion 
here to some recently deceased poet are not convincing, nor does any 
topical reference seem to be necessarily implied. 

V. i. 55. Sorting. Agreeing, fitting. 

V. i. 59. Wondrous. For pronunciation, cf. Introd., p. 40, 2. 
Strange. Unnatural, prodigious. 

V. i. 74. Unbreathed. Unpractised. 

V. i. 79-81. Unless you . . . service. "Unless you can find 
entertainment in their endeavors, which they have stretched to the 
utmost in studying with cruel pain the lines of the play, for the 
purpose of serving you." [B.] 

V. i. 85. Overcharged. Overladen. 

V. i. 86. His. See Introd., p. 42, 2, a. 

V. i. 88. In this kind. At this sort of business, i. e. acting. 

V. i. 90. To take what they mistake. To accept in good part what 
they offer blunderingly. 

V. i. 91-2. Noble respect takes it in might, not merit. True nobility 
or courtesy, looking on, takes the will for the deed; "accommodates its 
judgment to the abilities of the performers, not to the merit of the 
performance." [S.] 

V. i. 93. Clerks. Scholars, men of learning. 

V. i. 96. Make periods. Come to a stop. 

V. i. 101. Fearful. Awe-struck, timorous. 

V. i. 105. To my capacity. In my opinion. 

V. i. 106. Address'd. Ready. 

V. i. 107. Flourish of trumpets. The usual announcement that the 
play was to begin. 

V. i. 108 ff. The mispunctuation, indicating that Quince's faulty 
elocution leads him into saying the exact opposite of what his lines 
intend, is very carefully observed in both Quartos and Folios. The 
same comic device is used in Nicholas Udall's comedy of Ralph Roister 
Doisler, played about the middle of the sixteenth century. 

V. i. 113. Minding. Intending. 

V. i. 118. Stand upon. Observe. Points. Punningly used, mean 



tZ2 NOTES 

ing either (1) the proprieties of speech, or (2) the marks of punctuation. 

V. i. 120. Knows not the stop. A pun of a similar nature, since stop 
may be taken as a term in horsemanship, indicating a particularly 
6udden method of bringing a horse to a stop. 

V. i. 123. Recorder. A kind of flute or flageolet. In government. 
Under control. 

V. i. 126. Gentles. Gentlefolk, ladies and gentlemen; a common 
form of address. 

V. i. 129. Certain. The throwing of the accent on the second syl- 
lable produces the burlesque effect that is apparent through all the 
diction, rhyming, and pronunciation of the performance by Bottom's 
company. 

V. i. 138. Hight. Is called. 

V. i. 141. Fall. Used transitively. 

V. i. 143. Tall. Valiant. 

Y. i. 146. Broach' d. Pierced. "Apt alliteration's artful aid" has 
been much employed in English poetry from Anglo-Saxon times down, 
but it is the excessive use of it in old dramas like Sir Clyomon and 
Sir Clamydes that Shakspere here parodies. 

V. i. 162. Sinister. Left. 

V. i. 169. Grim-look'd. Grim-looking. 

V. i. 181. Sensible. Possessing senses. 

V. i. 194. Lover's grace. Graceful lover. 

V. i. 195. Limander. Bottom's version of Leander, as Helen in 
the following line, is Flute's error for Hero. 

V. i. 197. Shafalus and Procrus. Cephalus and Procris, whose 
story is told by Ovid, Met. VII. 

V. i. 202. 'Tide life, 'tide death. Whatever may betide. 

V. i. 205. Moon used. This is the reading of the Quartos. The 
Folios read "Morall down," which Theobald emended to "mure [= 
wall] all down," and Pope to "mural down." The folio reading on 
which these later conjectures are based seems like an unauthorized 
attempt to make this speech fit with the next. The quarto reading 
is possible, and, on the whole, gives as good sense as any of the emenda- 
tions. 

V. i. 222. A lion, etc. I am a lion's skin, and in no other sense can 
be said to contain a lion. 

V. i. 223. Pity on my life. Cf. III. i. 43. 

V. i. 231 ff. The kind of verbal fencing illustrated by the speeches of 
Demetrius and Theseus, which seems very flat to us, greatly tickled 
the fancy of the Elizabethans, and proficiency in it was part of the 
equipment of a courtier. Cf. the scene between the French lords in 
Henvy V., III. vii. 

V. i. 243. Greatest error of all the rest. Abbott (Gr. 409) calls this 
a confusion of two constructions, viz. : the greatest error of all, and a 



NOTES 153 

greater error than all the rest. Abbott quotes Milton's lines in Paradise 
Lost, iv. 323-4: 

"Adam the goodliest of men since born 
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve." 

V. i. 247. In snuff. A common pun on two meanings of snuff as 
(1) the burnt out part of a wick, (2) anger. Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, 
V. ii. 22: "You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff." 

V. i. 267. Mous'd. Thisbe's mantle is shaken and torn by the lion, 
as is a mouse by a cat. 

V. i. 276. Dole. Grief. 

V. i. 284. Thread and thrum. In weaving the thread runs length- 
wise of the loom to make the warp, while the tufts at the end of the 
warp where it is tied, are called thrums. 

V. i. 285. Quail. Seems to have no particular meaning, but to 
be used for its alliterative effect. Quell. Kill. 

V. i. 286. Passion. Violent sorrow. 

V. i. 296. Pap. In the pronunciation of Shakspere's time this 
probably rhymed with hop. 

V. i. 305. No die, but an ace, for him. The ace is the single spot on 
a die, in any game where dice are used. The punning on ace is con- 
tinued by Theseus in ass, 1. 310. 

V. i. 317. Which Pyramus, which Thisbe. I. e. whether Pyramus 
or Thisbe is the better. 

V. i. 318-19. He for a man . . . bless us. Omitted from the 
Folios, probably because of the statute of James I., passed in 1605, 
against using the name of God on the stage. 

V. i. 322. Videlicet. As follows. 

V. i. 335. Sisters Three. The Fates. 

V. i. 339. Shore. A burlesque rhyming form of shorn. 

V. i. 343. Imbrue. Stain with blood. 

V. i. 352. Bergomask. A rustic dance after the manner of the people 
of Bergamo in northern Italy, who were considered especially clownish. 

V. i. 354. Your play needs no excuse. The epilogue of a play usually 
begged the indulgence of the audience; cf. Puck's concluding lines. 

V. i. 359. Discharg'd. Performed. Cf. IV. ii. 8. 

V. i. 361. Told. Counted, numbered. 

V. i. 364. Overwalch'd. Stayed up too late. 

V. i. 365. Palpable-gross. Palpably or evidently gross, stupid. 

V. i. 366. Heavy gait of flight. Cf. Henry V., IV. Prol. 20: "the 
cripple tardy-gaited night." 

V. i. 372. Fordone. Exhausted. The prefix for—, like the German 
ver — , implies negation or injury. 

V. i. 382. Triple Hecate. Statues of Hecate usually had three 
bodies and three heads, because of the three realms in which she was a 
divinity. In heaven she was called Cynthia or Luna, on earth Diana, 



154 NOTES 

in hell Hecate or Proserpina. Triple is equivalent to the Latin triformis 
or tergemina, epithets applied to the goddess by Horace and Virgil. 

Prodigious. Monstrous. 

Consecrate. Consecrated. 

Gait. Way. 

Unearned luck. Undeserved good fortune. 

Serpent's tongue. The hiss of disapproval. 

Hands. Applause. 

Restore amends. "Return your favors." [B.J. 



V. 


i. 410. 


V. 


i. 413. 


V. 


i. 414. 


V. 


i. 430. 


V. 


i. 431. 


V. : 


i. 435. 


V. 


i. 436. 



WORD INDEX 



Abridgement, V. i. 39. 
aby, III. ii. 175; III. "• 335- 
ace, V i. 305 
Acheron, III. ii. 357. 
adamant, II. i. 195. 
address'd, V. i. 106. 
advance, III. ii. 128. 
after-supper, V. i. 34. 
against, I i. 125.; III. ii. 99. 
aggravate, I. ii. 80. 
alone, III. ii. 119. 
amiable, IV. i. 2. 
an, I. ii. 51; I. ii. 82. 
anon, III. ii. 18. 
approve, II. ii. 68. 
apricocks, III. i. 164. 
argument, III. ii. 242. 
artificial, III. ii. 203. 
aunt, II. i. 51. 

Barm, II. i. 38. 
barren, III. ii. 13. 
bated, I. i. 190. 
belike, I. i. 130. 
bergomask, V. i. 352. 
beshrew, II. ii. 54. 
beteem, I. i. 131. 
blood, I. i. 68; I. i. 135. 
bones, IV. i. 29. 
bottle, IV. i. 33. 
breath, III. ii. 44. 
brief, V. i. 42. 
broach'd, V. i. 146. 
brow of Egypt, V. i. 11. 
bully, III. i. 8. 
buskin'd, II. i. 71. 



Canker-blossom, III. ii. 282. 
cankers, II. ii. 3. 
capacity, V. i. 105. 
Cavalery, IV. i. 22. 
changeling, II. i. 23. 
chiding, IV. i. 114. 
childing, II. i. 112. 
choughs, III. ii. 21. 
clerks, V. i. 93. 
close, III. ii. 7. 
coil, III. ii. 339. 
collied, I. i. 145. 
compact, V. i. 8. 
companies, I. i. 219. 
companion, I. i. 15. 
conceits, I. i. 33. 
condole, I. ii. 27. 
confounding, III. ii. 93. 
consecrate, V. i. 413. 
constancy, V. i. 26. 
contagious, II. i. 90. 
continents, II. i. 92. 
courageous, IV. ii. 27. 
courtesy, IV. i. 20. 
coy, IV. i. 2. 
crab, II. i. 48. 
crazed, I. i. 92. 
cry your mercy, III. i. 177. 
curst, III. ii. 300. 

Darkling, II. ii. 86. 
date, III. ii. 3 73- 
deriv'd, I. i. 99. 
discharge, IV. ii. 8. 
discharg'd, V. i. 359. 
distemperature. II. i. 106. 



156 



WORD INDEX 



dole, V. i 276. 

dotage, IV. i. 46. 

double, II. ii. 9. 

dowager, I. i. 5. 

drawn, III. ii. 402. 

due, I. i. 154; III. ii. 214. 

Eat, II. ii. 149. 
eglantine, II. i. 252. 
enforced, III. i. 199. 
Ercles, I. ii. 29. 
estate unto, I. i. 98. 
Ethiope, III. ii. 257. 
exposition, IV. i. 38. 
extenuate, I. i. 120. 
eyne, I. i. 242; II. ii. 99. 

Faining, I. i. 31. 

faint, I. i. 215. 

fair, I. i. 182. 

fall, V. i. 141. 

fancy, I. i. 118; I. i. 155; 

i 162. 
fancy-free, II. i 164. 
fancy-sick, III. ii. 96. 
fantasies, V. i. 5. 
favour, I. i. 186. 
favours, IV. i. 48. 
fear, V. i. 21. 
fearful, V. i. 101. 
fee, III. ii. 113. 
filch'd, I. i. 36. 
flew'd, IV. i. 119. 
fond, II. ii. 88; III. ii. 114: 

ii. 317. 
force perforce, III. i. 139. 
fordone, V. i. 372. 
fruitless, III. ii. 371. 

Gait, V. i. 414. 
gallant, I. ii. 23. 
gawds, I. i. 33. 
gaud, IV. i. 166. 
gentleness, II. ii. 132. 
gentles, V. i. 126. 



glance at, II. i. 75. 
gleek, III. i. 145. 
go about, IV. i. 205. 
God's my life, IV. i. 202. 
grace, IV. i. 133. 
gracious, IV. i. 217. 
griffin, II. i. 232. 
grim-look'd, V. i. 169 
grow to a point, I. ii. 10. 

Hands, V. i. 435. 

harbinger, III. ii. 380. 

have, III. i. 169. 

henchman, II. i. 121. 

Hiems, II. i. 109. 

hight, V. i. 138. 

hind, II. i. 232. 

his, II. i. 95; HI ii. 368; V. 

i. 86. 
humour, I. ii. 28. 

IV. Imbrue, V. i 343 

immediately, I. i. 45- 
impeach, II. i. 214. 
increase, II. i. 114- 
interlude, I. ii. 6. 

Jowl, III. ii. 338. 
juvenal, III. i. 94- 

Knot-grass, III. ii. 329- 

Lakin, III. i. 13. 
III. latch'd, III. ii 36. 
leagues, I. i. 159- 
lesser, II. ii. 89. 
Limander, V. i. 195. 
lingers, I. i. 4- 
lob, II. i. 16. 
lode-stars, I i. 183. 
love-in-idleness, II. i. 168. 
lovers' grace, V. i. 194 

Margent, II. i. 85. 
marry, I. ii. 11. 



WORD INDEX 



157 



mask, I. ii. 49. 
mazes, II. i. 99. 
mechanicals, III. ii. 9. 
mew'd, I. i. 71. 
minding, V. i. 113. 
minimus, III. ii. 329. 
misgraflfed, I. i. 137. 
mispris'd mood, III. ii. 74. 
misprision, III. ii. 90. 
momentany, I. i. 143. 
moon used, V. i. 205. 
more better, III. i. 20. 
mous'd, V. i. 267. 
murrain, II. i. 97. 

Neaf, IV. i. 19. 

neeze, II. i. 56. 

nine men's morris, II. i. 98. 

nole, III. ii. 17. 

nor . . . not, II. i. 201. 

Obscenely, I. ii. 105. 
observation, IV. i. 103. 
o'ercharged, V. i. 85. 
o'erlooked, II. ii. 121. 
oes, III. ii. 188. 
of all loves, II. ii. 154. 
offices, II. ii. 8. 
orbs, II. i. 9. 
orient, IV. i. 53. 
original, II. i. 117. 
other, IV. i. 65. 
ounce, II. ii. 30. 
ousel cock, III. i. 124. 
overflown, IV. i. 16. 
overwatch'd, V. i. 364. 
owe, II. ii. 79. 
oxlips, II. i. 250. 

Painted maypole, III. ii. 296. 
p-ipable-gross, V. i. 365. 
pard, II. ii. 31. 
parlous, III. i. 13. 
parts, III. ii. 153. 
passion, V. i. 286. 



pat, III. i. 2. 

patch'd, IV. i. 208. 

patches, III. ii. 9. 

patent, I. i. 80. 

paved, II. i. 84. 

pensioners, II. i. 10. 

periods, V. i. 96. 

persever, III. ii. 237. 

pert, I. i. 13. 

Philomel, II. ii. 13. 

pity of my life, III. i. 42; V. 

224. 
plain-song, III. i. 130. 
points, V. i. 118. 
Puck, II. i. 40. 
puppet, III. ii. 288. 
purple-in-grain, I. ii. 91. 
preferr'd, IV. ii. 38. 
prevailment, I. i. 35. 
privilege, II. i. 220. 
Procrus, V. i. 197. 
prodigious, V. i. 410. 
proper, I. ii. 84. 
protest, I. i. 89. 

Quail, V i. 285. 
quaint, II. ii. 7. 
quantity, I. i. 232. 
quell, V. i. 285. 
quern, II. i. 36. 
quill, III. i. 127. 
quire, II. i. 55. 

Recorder, V. i. 123. 
rere-mice, II. ii. 4. 
respect, II. i. 224. 
respects, I. i. 160. 
restore amends, V. i. 436. 
right, III. ii. 302. 
ringlets, II. i. 86. 
ripe, II. ii. 118; V. i. 42. 
roundel, II. ii. 1. 

Sad, IV. i. 94. 
saddest, II. i. 51. 



158 



WORD INDEX 



sanded, IV. i 119- 

scrip, I. ii. 3. 

sensible, V. i. 181. 

serpent's tongue, V. i. 431- 

Shafalus, V. i. 197- 

sheen, II. i. 29. 

shore, V. i. 339- 

shrewd, II. i. 33; III. ii. 323. 

simplicity, I. i. 171. 

sinister, V. i. 162. 

snuff, V. i. 247- 

sort, III. ii. 13; HI n. 21; III. 

ii. 159. 
sorting, V. i. 55. 
sphery, II. ii. 99. 
spleen, I. i. 146. 
spotted, I. i. no. 
square, II. i. 30. 
squash, III. i. 184. 
stalls, III. ii. 10. 
stand upon, V. i. 118. 
stealth, III. ii. 310; IV. i. 159. 
still, I. i. 212; III. ii. 345- 
stop, V. i. 120. 
strange, V. i. 59- 
super-praise, III. ii. 153. 

"Tailor," II. i. 54- 

tales, III. ii. 133. 

tall, V. i. 143- 

tame, III. ii. 259. 

thin, II. i. 109. 

thing of naught, IV. ii. 14. 

throstle, III. i. 126. 

throws, II. i. 255. 

thrum, V. i. 284. 

tiring-house, III. i. 4. 

told, V. i. 361. 



tongs, IV. i. 29. 

touch, III. ii. 70. 

toward, III. i. 78. 

trace, II. i. 25. 

translated, I. i. 191; III. i. 118. 

transported, IV. ii. 4. 

trim, III. ii. 157. 

triple Hecate, V. i. 382. 

troth, II. ii. 36; II. ii. 42; III 

ii. 92. 
two of the first, III. ii. 213. 

Unbreathed, V. i. 74. 
uncouple, IV. i. 106. 
unearned luck, V. i. 43 °. 
unhard'ned, I. i. 35. 

Vaward, IV. i. 104. 
videlicet, V. i. 322. 
villagery, II. i. 35. 
virtue, IV i. 168. 
virtuous, III. ii. 367- 
voice, I. i. 54. 

Wanton, II. i. 99. 
washes, II. i. 104. 
waxen, II. i. 56. 
weed, II. i. 256. 
welkin, III. ii. 356. 
wonted, II. i. 113. 
wood, II. i. 192. 
woodbine, II. i. 251. 
worser, II. i. 208. 

You (eth. dat.), I. ii. 81. 
you were best, I. ii. 2. 
your, III. i. 32. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



